eLearning Roadtrip

A Taxonomy for Creative Abrasion, Part 1

Taxonomy (from Greek taxis meaning arrangement or division and nomos meaning law) is the science of classification according to a pre-determined system, with the resulting catalog used to provide a conceptual framework for discussion, analysis, or information retrieval.

As you may have read in my previous post, I am interested in finding a way to gently remind our passionate outspoken learning technologies community members not to poison the well of innovation adoption for the rest of us. There are many of us who need to take smaller steps to enact change at the enterprise levels where we work. Wild men howling about laggards don't go very far in this particular universe where systemic, enterprise-level change (the other 50%) happens.

To the end of channeling the power of our outspoken canaries in the proverbial learning technologies coal mine, I would like to propose a Taxonomy for Creative Abrasion. It points out different levels at which creative abrasion occurs, and makes it possible to identify points and parties for maximizing the impact of abrasion at various points in the Diffusion of Innovation adoption process.

My tongue is only sort of in my cheek (a great US English language expression for being factious) on this one. For the most part I don't give a rip when people vent online. Even when they get a little pointed. I appreciate when someone cares enough to say something. But I DO start to care when the venting - no matter how well intentioned - goes deep to negative. I care when some well-intentioned but totally clueless "industry expert" effectively yells at my software industry SVP, telling her that she is a greedy, stupid laggard. Seriously. Dude, what are you thinking?

But as I mentioned yesterday, many of my industry advisors have made a point to remind me of the value of the loud truth-tellers and oracles (at Delphi. Not Redwood Shores). And I do understand that the truth-telling needs to be loud enough that it rises above the white noise of every-day life.

So with all of these things in mind and an eye toward the absurd, I am pleased to present the Sage Road Taxonomy for Creative Abrasion:

1.0 Awareness - Awareness abrasion is barely more than a tickle. Think of the well-meaning professor who occasionally repeats himself in class. It's kind of irritating, but since it's an idiosyncrasy of someone you respect, you mostly don't notice and if you do you get over it pretty quickly.

2.0 Attention - Attention abrasion is when that tickle turns into an itch. You are a lot more than just aware. Now you are focused on whatever it is that is starting to get under your skin. It's not so bad, but you know it's there. Late night TV marketing falls into this category. It's easy to walk away to get a snack, until the one info-mercial for that one very special thing you need for fixing the garage door comes on....and you miss it. For the next 10 minutes or the next commercial break, whichever comes first, you will pay attention to every single ad to make sure you don't miss it again.

3.0 Aggravation - Aggravation abrasion is when you need to scratch - hard. The abrasion in this level is really irritating, impossible to ignore. Think of the child sitting behind you on the airplane, kicking your seat. Or telephone solicitors who call in the middle of dinner. Political solicitations.

4.0 Alarm - Alarm abrasion is the kind that focuses attention past aggravation and underscores urgency. It's when the itch is so bad that you scratch hard enough to remove skin. It's the kind of sensation that many of us in California experienced when we realized that Proposition 8 was going to pass, realizing that all those placards in church parking lots were a bad sign for members of my particular congregation.

5.0 Action - Action abrasion is the point at which there is a need for resolve, as said abrasion really needs to stop. The Call for Action is the point at which whatever has been going on has finally reached a tipping point, where the one being abraded gets up and actively deals with whatever has been bugging them.

In my next post I will talk about the points in the learning technologies value chain where different kinds of abrasion can be used to collectively positive results.

Time for A Taxonomy of Creative Abrasion

There's nothing like a feisty little tweet-fest to get a girl going in the morning. I had a great conversation earlier today with some of my favorite tweeters - Mark Oehlert (@moehlert), Dave Ferguson (@Dave_Ferguson), Clark Quinn (@quinnovator) and Steve Howard (@stevehoward999) - about the relative value of what our friend Lance Dublin refers to as "creative abrasion".

What got me going was Donald Clark's blog post about the Open Learning Innovation Fund. Donald is unhappy about the organizations that are going to be involved in implementing some of the recommendations of the recent Digital Britain report. He's unhappy that the head of the British Library - "a librarian"  - will be driving the agenda. (Does he really not know that librarians are the quintessential "chief information officers" of the new digital world order??) I know the real concern is about the lack of confidence in how the fund is going to be spent. But when ranting is personal and mean it seems pretty obvious that it gets in the way and can even even obscure the important points he is trying to share.

Mark Oehlert reminded me that it is critical to have loud and honest voices asking tough questions. Clark Quinn gently suggested that sometimes caustics can eat away hype, reveal real value, and that it can be instructive, if done right. I don't disagree. But I DO believe in civility in professional dialogue because it's not ideas that bring about change - PEOPLE bring about change when the value of making the change is self-evident.  In my experiences of  implementing systemic change at enterprise levels I have observed time and time again that it's typically more productive if one doesn't begin the discussion by saying things like "You couldn’t have gathered a more useless, backward looking bunch of laggards if you tried."  Organizational change is not likely to emerge if execs in charge want to kill the messenger.

I'd like to propose that we quit getting mad, and start getting even by thinking about how to make sure our "canary in the coal mine" tendencies of tweeting our brains out can actually be the catalyst for the the change that we all want to create when it comes to learning and technology innovation.

So. Back to "Innovation Diffusion 101". Let's revisit the Roger's Diffusion of Innovation Adoption distribution curve. Looks like this:

When one considers the points in the adoption process where organizations can begin bringing about systemic change it doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure out that that hostile voices coming from the 2nd and 3rd standard deviation from the left (the innovator side of the distribution) can be just as non-productive and hard to capitalize on for those of us in the mushy middle of enterprise innovation adoption as the whimpering that comes from the 2nd and 3rd standard deviation from the right (the laggard side of the distribution).

But what it also tells us is that, just as Clark and Mark and Lance have reminded me, there is an important place for the creative abrasionist. Let's think about how we can help those of us who really are doing their best to keep us all on the bright and shining path of innovation diffusion to be heard by those who can take things to the next step.

This suggests the value of a Taxonomy for Creative Abrasion - a stepwise model that focuses our efforts to abrade at the points where the friction we create is likely to produce energy and action, and not just burn down the house.

More on a first draft of my Taxonomy in my next post. I'm only sort of kidding. And thanks for letting me share. I may choose to be civil in my discourse, but that doesn't mean I feel any less emotion then those who are wearing the cranky pants.

Think Like a Product Manager

 "Business as usual" isn't so usual anymore. I'm sure that has a lot to do with questions about the relevancy of learning, elearning and instructional design as we've known them. While I know there are some calls to dump ID and to transform elearning into metaverses and social networks, I would suggest some additional reforms.

In the midst of all of the economic chaos it has become clear that we need to pay better attention to the business side of our business. Tony Karrer had a great blogpost on this topic. Jay Cross has taken this on as his next mission. And of course this is what my co-workers and I do at Sage Road Solutions every day.

Personally, I'm delighted about this change. The shift in awareness and new demands for accountability, value on investment and providing real business value with learning solutions is so palpable you can almost feel it.  It suggests that we are maturing beyond the "craft" model of elearning and performance support where we (had to) do everything ourselves. It suggests we are ready for teams and specialization. It also suggests that maybe we are ready to think about the value that we drive in business terms.

It has always bothered me that a profession that puts so much stake in systematic processes has been built more on the foundations of self-evident truth than on real evidence. "What?!" I can just hear you shriek. "That's heresy! Why, every ID knows that the first thing we do is to ANALYZE! We are systematic. We use ADDIE! We know Kirkpatrick's Four Levels! We follow process models that are based in research and theory!"

What most IDs count as systematic analysis is when we figure out who will be learning, what they will be learning, how long will it take, when will it take place, for how long and how to test for success. These are the basic building blocks of any learning design. But they are also dictated in large measure by the conditions and context in which they are built and deployed. These kinds of things are not typically revenue driving activities. Which means that they end up being counted as costs. Costs without revenues to justify them - and pay for them - are bad.

For better or worse, I learned this lesson long after I had been an ID professor. When I started working at Macromedia I was a lone learning and design solutions market specialist working with a team of MBAs that needed to take learning and education solutions to market. I quickly realized that it really didn't matter that I could tell all about the learning theories I'd used and the instructional design model I preferred, and which level of the Kirkpatrick model I used to evaluate whether I achieved more satisfaction than impact.

My business partner at the time needed me to help her figure out answers to far more important business questions - what kind of demand could we show for the solutions I wanted to develop? What technology features really mattered to our customers? What could we actually sell? Who would buy what I was designing? Really? How much money would my customers be willing to spend for the kinds of things I was thinking about? Which demographic might be most likely to want what I was doing?  What kinds of objections would we need to overcome? How could we best make our case with the customers?

I learned the lessons pretty well - well enough that Beth Davis, my former Macromedia business partner (best known in this industry for bringing a little product called Dreamweaver to market back in the Web 1.0 heyday, along with many other similar kinds of product successes over the past decade) and I decided to continue our unique blend of helping customers drive business value with learning products and solutions here at Sage Road Solutions. We have realized that the way we approach solving our customers' business problems has little to do with process, and has everything to do with dealing with our solutions as products.

Basically, Beth has taught me to think like a product manager. She has helped me understand that learning solutions may function as processes, but the solutions themselves ARE products - they need to be clear, definable, concrete, operational, has boundaries and has a fixed price. and not focusing so much on the processes that get us to the point of use, but more about figuring out how to solve problems. We need real metrics, because if we dont get the market defined right then we have no way of capturing the new and emerging opportunites. And these days, capturing the opportunity is maybe almost as important as getting the learning design right.

There is a point where talking about all the processes and possibilities just gets to be exhausting. For me, getting tangible and real about getting down to business is the most satisfying part of what we do. So much better to show, not tell. My .02.

Psst...for researchers only.

Many of the people I follow on Twitter are spending time at summer conferences. The ASTD ICE, Innovations in eLearning, NMC, Games, Learning and Society...it's been a bit like reading letters from summer camps for grown-ups. You can tell how much people love to hang with their like-minded friends and rivals (Nothing like sitting through a presentation by someone ELSE working in YOUR area to get teeth grinding and ideas flowing). The quality of tweets and posts have been exceptional - insights and reflections, great links to articles and blog posts, flashes of humor and grace.

It's really interesting to see different proficiencies emerge across the learning-technology-design industry when everyone is tweeting in the same stream.  Can I just say...that last sentence ...I mean exactly what I just said. It's too bad it sounds bizarre.

In any event - This is a tip for those of you who conduct quantitative research on the topics related to learning, technology, design and performance improvement efficacy using various types of technology. You may not realize it, but you can influence the technology product roadmaps with the companies that you know and love. The impact of your data may not necessarily influence product design with your research, per se - unless you come from computer science or engineering. Instead, the empirical evidence you share may help sell technology products to specific vertical markets. You can become part of the go-to-market strategy.

Specifically, if you have data that shows that particular kinds of features in products can help students retain more, remember better, perform at peak levels of efficiency for longer periods of time then you need to figure out a way to get that information to the education marketing team at your technology company of your choice. Because those are the kinds of facts and figures that help sales teams connect with their educational customers. Education customers don't just want to hear about features and benfits. They also want to know about best practices for using products to solve real problems.

Here are a few things to keep in mind: Tech companies don't want to sponsor your research. At least the marketing departments don't. In fact, I can think of no faster way to turn off your marketing team point of contact than to start asking for free stuff. There are company policies forbidding that in most places that I know of. What they CAN do is to help promote your findings, showcase your success. They can also help support some of the work you are doing in exchange for you presenting your findings that are favorable to the company at conferences germane to your industry. So do your best to summarize your key findings in a page or two. Use easy to understand, direct language that is as jargon free as you can be. Use numbers that will help make a point.

Good Luck.

...And Internet for All

It has been great to lurk in the NMC Tweetchat this afternoon. What a fascinating bunch of very smart, well-integrated thinkers and doers. I'm biased, of course - I am a former member of the Board of Directors of the NMC, from during the time I worked at Macromedia. I already follow a number of the NMC illumerati (here's a shoutout to @BryanAlexander, @Alan_Wolf, @cogdog, @GardnerCampbell, to name a few), and have found several more people to follow today.

Bryan Alexander has been doing a particularly good job leading the tweeting on the session #nmcfear2009, the session describing big fears from educators about education. It would be foolish for me to say much more when you can click on the links and see for yourself. (Just in case you want a deeper dive, here is the link to the Fears Wiki that has been set up following this session.)

It's still kind of amazing to me that I am telling you about my afternoon at the NMC conference as I am working in my office, a 3 hour drive north of the gathering at CSU- Monterey Bay. Tweetchat and Twitter and Tweetdeck are definitely my friends!!!

No doubt, having ready access to the Internet is no longer a "nice to have", it's something I require. Just last week I checked out of a hotel at 7 pm at night when the hotel Internet went down and nobody could guarantee a time when they would be back online. Perhaps even more telling was the fact that the hotel did NOT charge me for the extra day when I checked out that night, because they knew just how unacceptable the situation was. As my friend Colleen Carmean has observed, "No Internet is called camping." Very bad juju for a hotel to make their customers camp.

This is not just me being obsessive compulsive about checking my email, or simply being a west-coast uber-geek. Today I saw a piece of news noting that a French court has declared  access to the Internet is a basic human right. I also read in today's Chronicle of Higher Education that a new Schools, Health and Libraries Broadband Coalition, made up of 28 commercial and not-for-profit groups including the American Library Association, Internet2, and EDUCAUSE, have just announced an initiative where they are working to provide broadband Internet access to the public.

Seems to me that those of us who are blessed with propensities toward learning, design, creativity and technology are being presented with an almost unlimited array of golden opportunities to apply our unique knowledge and skills where we really truly can make the world a better place just by doing what we love to do.

Call me crazy, but I just can't find a lot wrong with this.

Why It Matters What They Call Us.

It's nice when people care enough about what I'm saying to leave a comment on the blog.

I got a comment earlier today about my most recent post. I've proposed that elearning professionals come from a long line of learning technology solution designers, and by definition, are competent in (1) ID skills and (2) IT skills.  My commentor suggested that I have fallen into a technology trap. Perhaps I have. Maybe, better put, I am trying to get out of one.

As long as a/v media and digital technologies of various kinds have been deployed in teaching, learning and training settings, there has been a role for specialists who understand both how to design instructional/learning solutions that are valid, reliable and effective AND how to script, produce and develop engaging, rich technology-mediated experience.  Someone who can help reduce the friction that naturally occurs at the intersection when one practice rubs up against another.

And I say this not as some who teaches with technology. I say this as someone who does market research on what does and does not seem to influence how industries evolve. What I've seen is that the prospective impact of an effective learning design is greatly facilitated if it is accompanied by an experience that engages and inspires. And these days one of the places where people are investing in learning experience is in technology. Today there is a growing need for this kind of person who can make the piece parts come together better.

In spite of the fact that ID/IT specialists types (who today tends to be bunched under a number of job titles, "elearning professional" "instructional designer" and "learning technologist" among them) are found in virtually every school, every business, every government agency, every NGO in the world....

...it is a profession that is virtually invisible because there is no consistency in what it is called, as we go by so many different names. Which means that we are not seen in any number, which also means we're not seen in any volume (which in technology is kind of a bad thing). We're not numbered on Labor censuses and surveys - we fall into the category of "other". Ever fill out the requisite form when you want to download a research whitepaper or some such thing? What industry to DO work in? What's YOUR sector?

When you are unnamed, you're at greater risk of being excluded because nobody really knows where you are or what you do. You probably don't have much buying power. Or revenue generating power. Which means not much perceived strategic value. Which means no clout.

I'm not saying this to be mean. Or to pontificate. I'm saying this as a shared wake-up call. Better, as an invitation to get better at articulating the value proposition of what learning technology specialists can contribute to the strategic well-being of our stakeholders and constituents at a time when driving new value matters.

Should elearning practices and ID/IT professionals be defined by our ability to produce courseware? Well, we're going to be judged by our technology facility, might as well accept that. It's half of what we do. So yes. We gotta get better and raise the bar on our technological competencies. So courseware, as the dominant paradigm. And apps, because that where the industry is heading. And  games. And virtual worlds.

Or do we believe that the thing that makes us unique as an industry is using technology to enable learning? Well, yes to that, too. We gotta. It's the other half of what we do. Enabling learning through the design of solutions that empower individuals and organizations. We need to know enough about learning theory - AND about assessment and measurement - AND about evaluation - AND about pedagogy/andragogy - that we can actually produce a design that intentionally improves learning and performance.

We have a while before the new economy picks up speed, so there is still time to get smart about working smarter, using our networks and letting technology mediate experience. We'll need to be ready. Sort of like training for a race. Or maybe even an ID-cathelon.

On eLearning, ID and Learning Technologies

I was amused - and gratified - to see that some of my comments in my 1 June post yanked a few chains around the notion that elearning professionals and learning professionals might not actually be one and the same people.

I'm not saying that eLearning professionals aren't learning pros. However, I do believe that there is a major differentiation between elearning professionals and other WLPs (workplace learning professionals) that is worth noting AND owning.

As many of us blogging in the elearning space have noted, eLearning professionals are the consummate, quintessential jack of all professional trades. We  write, create, design, author, produce, develop, proofread, evaluate, assess and distribute digital learning and learning assets objects, courses and programs for use with ILT, F2F,  distance learning, online learning, m-learning,  game based learning, virtual worlds and immersive simulations. We do this for HR and succession planning and training and development, corporate education, public education, private education, proprietary education, compliance, performance support, product roll-outs, safety and hazmat, cerification, new hires and exits. We work in financial services, the military, homeland security, insurance, manufacturing, medicine, schools, law and healthcare, media and publishing.

Sometimes it feel as if the boundaries of our professional identity get a bit porous...but that's okay, as long as we drive value, for the good of the team. Right? Well, no. Not if we lose our professional identity in the process.

So here's another way of looking at it.

Every since there have been media and technology used to facilitate teaching and learning there has been a need for someone who understands enough about the constructs of learning and the instructional designs needed to realize learning value AS WELL AS enough about the technologies available to create, share, collaborate and negotiate new knowledge, anywhere, anytime and just-in-time.

In the old days, our professional focused more on the instructional design side than the technology side of the equation. Because at the time, technology was not a requirement. It was a choice, a particular tactic for addressing multiple learning styles. Remember all of those models that tell us that FIRST we analyze, THEN we design, and THEN we develop??

...until technology became such a big part of the equation, even the necessary condition, that our technological requirements for enabling learning trumped the instructional design side of the conversation altogether, until we found ourselves completely absorbed by technology considerations. These days, some even go so far as to say that there is no place for ID in the brave new amalgamation of technology-mediated learning - whether virtual and real, distributed and F2F, rich or rapid.

And then we wondered why our learning programs seemed to look pretty good, and operate reasonably well, but nobody seems to get any smarter, nor do they feel engaged or inspired. D'oh.

Today, tech utilization is pretty much a given in our business and consumer lives.  eLearning professionals (which is the name most of us most likely go by today, since elearning is the technology of our age) need to to grok that we have a very specific and important role to play in the emerging new economic order that extends beyond authoring the content or managing the systems. We need to reclaim out ID roots and help our constituencies and stakeholder drive enterprise learning value via technologies.

Today our technology mediated teaching and learning solutions look like elearning. In three years we could very easily be talking about game-based learning instead of elearning. We used to call people like us photographers. Audio-visual specialists. Media specialists. Computer-based educators and trainers. Distance educators. In the old days, as our tools changed our professional identity changed, even if we were the same people just using different tools.

Maybe the time has come to put a stake in the ground to claim these domains as our own:

     INSTRUCTIONAL DESIGNER ( learning, assessment measurement and evaulation)
+   TECHNOLOGIST (representative & digital media, elearning, Web 1.0, Web 2.0 and beyond)
__________________________________
     LEARNING TECHNOLOGIST (e.g. elearning pro, CBT pro, mlearning pro, vlearning pro....).

We can do lots and lot and lots of things. We might even look like a lot of other professions. But we are unique. Just look at the formula that defines us.

Perfect Storm? or Perfect Opportunity?

There's nothing like a good flurry of tweets to help crystalize some new insights.

I've been reading lots of tweets, retweets, replies and even a few direct messages from people I follow commenting on today's sessions from #ASTD, otherwise known as the American Society for Training and Development International Conference and Expo.

I saw a number of comments (@jarche, @bschlenker, @raetanner) that gave me a pretty clear indication that the technologically savvy crowd was disappointed at how very "behind the 2.0 curve" the general ASTD assembly seemed to be. I saw complaints about the backwardness regarding social media and informal learning. I saw other comments that acknowledged how frustrating it is that learning innovations are being "gated" by IT departments.

It was in that moment that I had several insights.

When I envision the quintessential eLearning professional, that individual typically possesses two defining professional attributes. (1) We design interventions to maximize the probably that learning will occur, and (2) we depend upon Internet technologies to achieve our goals.

One might even suggest a fairly simplistic formulaic representation:

eLEARNING = INSTRUCTIONAL DESIGN + INTERNET (content/network/distribution/mgmt) TECHNOLOGY.

Anyone who has read this blog in the past few months knows that I have been on a tear about the kinds of skills I think IDs are going to need to be successful in the emerging professional worlds of enterprise learning. I think about this stuff all the time.

So my first insight was that it's self-defeating to think about getting rid of ID altogether when it is one of the two things that makes people like us unique in our market place.

My second insight was that enterprise learning professionals clearly need us more than ever before, because WE are the ones who know how to transform intangible information assets into things of great business or epistemological value.

IDs design programs that bring about a change in learning and performance.  We have to remember that no human being can do "learning" to another. What we CAN do is create experiences that maximize the probability that intentional learning is going to occur. And then we have to be able to determine of anything happened. And that is what IDs do.

As Internet technologies have becomes more sophisticated IDs have had to become increasingly more technologically proficient. In fact, in same parts of the world, ID is more oriented toward activities like content authoring than toward developing learning scaffolding and assessments. But whether we are IDs who are technically proficient, or technologists who understand ID principles, what makes us unique is that we design technology-based solutions to improve learning and performance.

eLearning professionals serve stakeholders in a variety of settings and vertical markets, working in a wide range of organizational roles: HR. Training and Development. Human Capital Management. Talent Management. Succession Planning. Sales Training. Customer Education. Product Training. Human Performance Technology.

My third insight was that sometimes we do our jobs with these constituencies so well that sometimes we look just like them. Sometimes we may specialize in understanding our customers' needs and requirements so well that we see ourselves as having dual citizenship. But that doesn't necessarily mean the we ARE them.

In other words, maybe we instructional design and learning technology types, we elearning professionals, need to understand that all those learning professionals at ASTD who come from Training and Education and HR and Sales and Compliance are as much our customers as they are our colleagues. We have a great opportunity to help these people see the value that learning technologies from interactive digital documents to web conferences to social media bring to THEIR practices.

I mention this subtle distinction because I think it helps provide a more positive point of view about what's going on at ASTD. It's not that our ASTD HR and T&D et al colleagues are dumb or resistant. It's simply that we have an opportunity  - the responsibility - to demonstrate the value of what these emerging solutions mean to our enterprises.

Just think of all the good that we ID and technology specialists, we eLearning professionals, can do. What great opportunities we have for engaging and empowering our stakeholders. Why complain about THAT???