“Teachers often suffer this illusion – the calculus instructor who finds calculus so easy that she can no longer place herself in the shoes of the student who is just starting and struggling with the subject” –
Brown, McDaniel, Roediger – Make it Stick.

Experts suffer from what’s known as the ‘curse of knowledge (aka ‘curse of expertise’) – Wikipedia Link

Learning Designers, in contrast, are (or should be) skilled to unpack the models SMEs hold and present the same more appropriately to novice learners. Asking SMEs to create courses themselves using an ‘easy’ authoring tool sounds like a great idea, but it isn’t. Some SMEs are certainly exceptions, but that is what they are exceptions.

In the book The Gamification of Learning and Instruction, Karl Kapp lists differences between Novices and Experts –

“In comparing the knowledge structures of experts with the knowledge structures of novices, differences have been observed in both the nature of their knowledge and their problem-solving strategies. For experts, the knowledge structures represent phenomena in the domain of higher-order principles. In other words, experts represent problems at a deep structural level in terms of basic principles within a domain; novices represent problems in terms of surface or superficial characteristics”

For example – “A novice learning professional focuses on determining which delivery method is best for instruction, while an expert considers whether or not the situation described by the manager can be solved by a formal learning intervention.”

Some key differences between experts and novices

• – When confronted with a problem, experts tend to work forward, from the known to the unknown while novices work backward.
• – Experts are more efficient at searching their memory because large portions of content are “bundled” or “chunked” for easy retrieval. Not the case with novices
• – Experts often take shortcuts as they have chunked and automated groups of steps together.

To sum up, while the contribution of SMEs is invaluable in the development of eLearning courses, they may not be best suited for creating courses themselves. Learning designers are better placed to create more meaningful courses by appropriately leveraging SMEs’ expertise.

References:

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5738945/table/T6/?report=objectonly

https://vimeo.com/259695272

https://karlkapp.com/some-differences-between-experts-and-novices/

The post Should SMEs Create eLearning Courses? first appeared on The Upside Learning Blog.

Just to be gender-neutral, Aristotle might have put his famous words differently today: “humans are interactive animals.” Indeed, we need to interact to be happy, to grow, and to learn. Yet, when it comes to workplace learning, how are we using interactivity?

Understanding interactions

Way back in 1989, Michael Moore [1] had defined three types of interactions in the context of distance education.

• Learner-content interaction

  is the intellectual process of interacting with content that results in changes in the learner’s understanding and perspective, or the cognitive structures of the learner’s mind.

• Learner-instructor interaction

  helps instructors to stimulate or at least maintain the student’s interest and to motivate the student to learn using self-direction and self-motivation.

• Learner-learner interaction

  happens among two or more learners, with or without the presence of an instructor, that helps to teach the skill of group functioning.

Do these descriptions sound a little archaic in the digital era? Does clicking4to play a video or to turn the page suffice? Or are we mistaking digital dazzle for effective interactivity?

Levels of interactivity

From a business process perspective, Rick Blunt [2] describes four levels of interactivity, based on mechanical complexity.

1: Passive learning

• Learner acts solely as a receiver of information.
• Involves text, graphics, simple audio, simple video, test questions. (Turn page, move video forward.)

2: Limited interactivity

• Simple responses to instructional cues.
• Uses multimedia and some exercises (drill, practice).

3: Complex interactivity

• Variety of responses to instructional cues using different techniques. (Complex branching and choices.)

4: Real-time interactivity

• Full immersion, simulated task performance, live feedback (Real-time simulation in operational setting.).
• Higher-level learning and learning for workplace performance require complex and real-time interactivity.
• Here, the focus is on Bloom’s [3] four higher levels: applying, analyzing, evaluating, and creating. Learners get to think and practice until they are proficient.

Interactivity of the mind

Interactivity has long been a hyped element in digital learning. Unfortunately, it is seen as a panacea for all that ails eLearning and as an excuse to increase costs “because there are many levels of interactivity.”

We tend to equate interactivity with engagement. Dan Brown is one of my favorite authors. His The Da Vinci Code kept me fully engaged even though my only interaction was to turn the pages. I believe this is a case of interactivity of the mind, not involving any device. I also believe that any interactivity we work into learning must involve interactivity of the mind.

Talking of the filmed format of fiction, screenwriters usually follow a three-act structure. The first act has the introduction and the first plot point. Act two describes what happens to the character and a twist in the plot. The final act has the climax which may not be what the viewer expects. The structure is designed to keep the audience hooked and would be a good act to follow when planning interactivity. (By the way, Aristotle [4] is credited with the three-act structure because he stated a tragedy must have a beginning, a middle, and an end.)

Interactivity ought to enable learners to apply their learning in realistic scenarios, in tandem with peers as well as experts and instantly evaluate the impact of their decisions. Interactive learning also ought to call upon higher order thinking skills, going beyond mere memorizing and passive involvement. Simply moving the mouse or clicking a button cannot be productive interactivity.

Unfortunately, at times we go to the other extreme and go overboard with the animation and special effects all in the name of interactivity. This may entertain, or more likely distract, but is unlikely to contribute to useful learning. Less flashy but equally unproductive is the next-button fatigue brought on by the learner waiting for the next NEXT button to appear just to keep moving and complete the course.

A digitally-delivered learning program may be infected by what ails many presentations—screens overloaded with charts, graphics, and umpteen bullet points. The hapless learner can barely figure out the core message before it is time for the next slide to come on.

Authentic interactivity

As Ethan Edwards [5] puts it, interactivity is at the very core of any instructional interaction.

What the learner is literally asked to do has an enormous impact in creating focus, engaging full attention and senses, creating memories, and setting the model for transferring skills to the performance environment. Activity describes the specific gestures and actions that the learner undertakes in response to the Challenge. You can’t actually have an interaction without the Activity part; the trick is to design activities that create learning.

He goes on to suggest four ways to do this:

1. Make the activity observable and unique

Cut down on the need to read. While reading is important, in the eLearning environment there is no reliable indicator to show if the learners are reading all that they are expected to. If you can’t observe or measure an activity, you can’t really manage it and the learning design fails. The “huge number of learners who simply don’t read,” make it imperative to go beyond reading.

2. Activities must require attention and thought

One can hazard the right answer in the good old multiple-choice question, without bothering about the real challenge at hand. There is no way to assess if the answer is a good guess or the outcome of authentic effort.

3. Mimic real-world behavior

The right activity ought to create the illusion of a real-world situation even if it is happening on the monitor. The learners should feel that they are making the decisions and using realistic gestures resulting in real-world consequences.

4. Good activities require effort

Ideally, the interactivity should provide “the possibility of a wide range of gestures or outcomes from which the learner chooses and then executes.” The final gesture may involve just a click of the mouse, but it must follow “proactive, exploratory experimentation” and should be “the result of active thinking and focused action.”

Bonus: Must challenge and excite

As an important component of learning, interactivity must have a clear goal, must motivate, and must engage meaningfully.

As Dennis Kyle [6] puts it, “Many people learn by doing, rather than being shown. They need to feel like they’re being given a chance to perform the actions they’re being told are expected of them. Great training provides opportunities for learners to do just that through strong, well thought out interactive elements.”

Elisabetta Galli [7] suggests that corporations should look at consumer software for inspiration: “Employees use social media and search in their spare time to satisfy their curiosity, right when they need it. It should be exactly the same at work. We must create corporate learning experiences to match consumer-grade experiences.” Interactivity has a major role in providing such an experience just-in-time.

Designing an engaging learning program is a challenging task for designers. Introducing purposeful interactivity makes it tougher, a tad more painful.

However, to quote Aristotle for one last time, “Learning is not child’s play; we cannot learn without pain.”  

This blog was originally published on elearningindustry.com.

The post Interactivity of the mind: Going beyond passive learning first appeared on The Upside Learning Blog.

While lighter moments are welcome, two sets of specialists are taking the new hybrid era very seriously. Human Resources (HR) and Learning & Development (L&D) have teamed up to steer modern business through the current choppy seas. They are doing their best to ensure that the organization has a stable team that is prepared to weather the next unanticipated upheaval, whether it involves a virus or not.

Learning takes the lead

Once upon a time, L&D was one of the many functions under the HR umbrella. Then dawned the realization that continuous learning was a business necessity. Came the pandemic and business is now scrambling to recruit, upskill, retain, and engage the team, with L&D at the helm. Organizations are now having to tackle several challenges including remote working, digital transformation, the great resignation, and issues of diversity, equity, and inclusion.

Before, one could count on a vibrant company culture to keep employees engaged. Now, with employees scattered across time zones and coping with connectivity problems, how does one even redefine culture? The senior, who was an expert in getting the best out of a machine or executing a critical task is now struggling with participating in a video call. How can they be kept engaged as they learn to coach remotely so that the organization can continue to gain from their experience?

It may be no panacea, but modern, digitalized learning is the way to stay alive and innovative. It is the way to stay ahead, even when one can’t be sure of the lay of the next lap.

Effective employee development

The seven ways that Keith Ferrazzi recommended some years ago to improve employee development hold good even today.

1. Support and encourage managers to coach their team. More than bosses, we need mentors and facilitators today.
2. Knowledge and skills are valuable but get obsolete fast. It is important to strike a balance between giving too much at one go and giving just what is needed now.
3. Teach employees to take charge of their own learning, and provide personalized solutions to facilitate that without losing sight of the overall business goal.
4. Make it possible for every employee to learn when it suits them best. On-demand, mobile solutions would be one obvious solution.
5. With the office losing its fixed geographical co-ordinates, virtual members are part of the team too. In addition to online courses, they must have easy access to online mentoring and coaching.
6. Want your subordinates to show some more interest in learning? Well, lead by example and become a perpetual learner!
7. Be aware of the learners’ profile. Ensure learning is as palatable to the young who live by the mobile as to those who think the buttons are too small for their fingers.

It is obvious that learning has an important role in employee development. Not surprisingly, L&D also features prominently in Eric Friedman’s list of the top 10 HR to-do issues for 2022.

1. Improve diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI).
2. Pave the way for remote, in-office, and hybrid work.
3. Improve change management.
4. Build critical skills.
5. Equip future leaders who are empathy-driven and conscious of the needs of their subordinates.
6. Find and nurture talent during a shortage.
7. Provide great employee experiences.
8. Identify skills employees will need going forward.
9. Modernize training practices.
10. Foster a healthy work environment (more so when everyone is not under the same roof).

Engaging learning, engaged employees

As “normal” remains in flux and new challenges pop up, there can be no progress without learning. Without engagement, there is neither learning nor learning transfer to facilitate performance. And therein lies a very real HR problem.

The lack of learning engagement can trigger a downward spiral. When learning slips, it dilutes employee experience (EX), and the entire organization can stagnate.

Andrea Boatman describes EX as an indicator of “how satisfied employees are with the full spectrum of their dealings with their employer, such as meaningful work, inclusive environment, or growth opportunities.”

Digital Employee Experience (DEX) is a subset of EX. DEX reflects “how effectively people interact with their workplace digital tools, which allows them to be engaged, proficient, and productive.”

In the typical modern organization, we have HR responsible for overall EX, IT for DEX, and L&D for learning experience (LEX). These are not silos but functions that share equal responsibility for the stability and success of business through continuous learning and learning-driven innovation.

According to Peter Hirst,  Senior Associate Dean of Executive Education at the MIT Sloan School of Management,  a culture of continuous learning is the mark of a healthy organization with engaged employees. “Research increasingly shows professional development is one of the top drivers of employee retention and a positive employee experience. Organizations that support continuous learning understand the enormity of the challenges their leaders are facing today and their need to be supported, connected, and empowered to lead.”

He is excited about the impact of digitalization on learning and, consequently, on employee engagement. “I think a big wave is building around the demand for well-designed, very engaging, live online, and asynchronously delivered experiences for professionals at all levels. I believe that we can deliver more compelling experiences virtually now than ever before. And some elements actually work better online.”

Learning is career development

For his book 1,001 Ways to Engage Employees Bob Nelson did a regression analysis of three million employee surveys and found that “the second-most significant driver of employee engagement is career development—that is, learning, development, and advancement opportunities that are provided to employees on a systematic basis. Career development isn’t an occasional training class or periodical promotions, but rather the daily journey of learning, job skills, and networking that puts employees on the course they most want to travel in their career—with their manager’s help in getting there.”

“Linking learning and career development to employee interests and aspirations is a simple yet powerful way to build employee engagement in your organization,” he affirmed.

Companies looking to tide over the Great Resignation, need to invest in long-term upskilling. “Upskilling is a longer-term investment in augmenting the knowledge, skills, and competencies that help employees advance their careers. When employees are offered and encouraged to take advantage of upskilling opportunities for their personal or professional growth, people metrics, such as employee engagement and retention, also go up.”

Three considerations are important as culled from the views of several HR and learning executives across industries:

1. Empower employees to own their career development, supported by their managers and enabled by the company.
2. Show where ideas go by providing feedback and sharing impact.
3. Provide a road map so that employees can identify clear paths and milestones for performance measurement, going beyond promotions and designation changes.

The story goes that John F. Kennedy, on a tour of NASA headquarters in 1961 at the height of the space race, stopped to speak to a janitor who was mopping the floor. Kennedy asked what the man did at NASA. The man with the mop replied. “I’m helping to put a man on the moon.”

If a random employee can articulate (in person or over a call) your business mission that well, it is a good indicator of impactful learning and engaged employees.

The post Better learning experiences lead to better employee engagement in the modern workplace first appeared on The Upside Learning Blog.

There was a time in the 1970’s, when workplace training was somewhat similar. An instructor would address a group of workers, run through some how-to’s and dare-not’s and at the end of it, the workers would hustle back to work. It did not matter if everyone got the message. There was no room for questions. You were expected to attend whether you liked it or not.

We still have big machines and training has not gone away. What has changed is the focus.

Today, we have the employees front and center. We respect their cultural background and skill level. We don’t merely talk to them; we take care to engage them.

The instructors have put away their pointers and stepped down from the podium. They have now moved to the screens intimately close to each learner, delivering just the right learning at the right time, tailored to the learner’s preferences and the organization’s larger goal.

Welcome to digitalization and modernization! It is not about simply migrating to a digital format. It is about using the opportunity presented by the new constant of frequent change. It is also about adapting learning to better suit the new generation of employees in the new work world.

Adaptation, more than conversion

For long, instructors have led training in organizations. Even when some companies shifted to the digital way of working, instructors remained at the helm of some programs. In came the virus and, with due respect to their skills, out went the instructors. The pandemic forced everyone to move from Instructor Led Training (ILT) to Virtual Instructor Led Training (VILT).

This conversion isn’t simply about digitizing the existing ILT content. It is an opportunity to revisit the purpose of the learning, redesign the media, and refashion the content for a modern, digitalized learning experience tailored to the modern, mobile employee.

At Upside Learning, we study the subject matter, the ecosystem of workplace learning, expected performance outcome, and how well we can match the learning with the learners’ profile.

It is about purposeful chunking of content, retaining only what is essential for learning. We design the new components (ranging from audio and video snippets to comic strips) with a human touch. We focus on the quality of the interaction of the learner—with the content and with trainer (who is now more of a close facilitator and guide than a distant teacher).

Going about it

We work with our customers in three phases. First, we help market the VILT, share read-this-first material, and conduct pre-assessments. Then we go about the conversion in a logical sequence of critical messaging interspersed with session breaks, activities, and interaction opportunities. After the launch, we hand out job-aid reading material, invite feedback on in-session activities, conduct post-assessments, and design follow-up interventions.

Any new initiative at the workplace is best eased in so that it can overcome resistance and even hostility. Much like the movies, we recommend a trailer or a teaser to ease apprehensions, trigger curiosity, and nurture excitement about the VILT. While the learner is the hero for every VILT, it is also important to train managers and subject matter experts in the new, virtual way to impart learning.

Virtual or in-person, learning must be interactive to be engaging and productive. A touch of gamification would add some spark, but only if the game elements are relevant to the learning.

The modern learner prefers to be an active partner rather than a passive participant. Learners must have ample opportunities to provide their feedback.

We plan breaks into the sessions to give the learners an opportunity to mull over and, more importantly, practice what they have learnt. Small groups could use breakout rooms to discuss and debate what they have gathered, thus introducing the all-important social dimension in modern learning.  

VILT is a flexible learning solution. Each employee can learn at a time that best suits one or the whole team can learn together. VILT makes it easy to scale up and adapt learning to the rapidly changing needs of business and the profile of new employees.

Virtual or real, effective learning matters

Learning in the Modern Times that Charlie Chaplin portrayed might have been different. In the modern times that we live and work in, the fundamentals of learning are well-established—know your business goals, know your learners, know their appetite, know the tools that can deliver learning, and when and where they need each tool most so that they can apply it productively.

A poll we conducted in early December 2021 revealed that for most respondents, modernization meant converting ILT to VILT or repurposing learning assets for learning experience platforms (LxP) and/or mobile (39%). For a lesser proportion of people, modernization was about conversion of Flash to HTML5 or transforming events to campaigns.

We believe there is more to modernization. There cannot be exclusive compartments or formulaic solutions. When business impact is the primary driver, learning must adapt to the times.

Need help to digitalize and modernize your learning? For starters, download this eBook.

The post Beyond mere conversion, virtual ILT is an opportunity to modernize learning first appeared on The Upside Learning Blog.

What if learning were wine? Would that make digitalization and modernization of learning so much old wine in a new bottle? Or new wine in old bottle?

When it comes to learning today, both the wine and the bottle need to be new.

Learning is not wining

To forget might be one of the prime reasons to enjoy wine but the key purpose of learning is to remember—and remembering what matters is essential to deliver the right action at the right time.

Keeping the wine glass aside for a moment, why should one learn at work?

An individual may learn to pick a new skill, perform better at an old task, earn a reward, avoid punishment, or simply because others are doing it. For businesses, learning could help boost performance, derive greater value from innovation, or stay ahead of the competition. Those reasons are age-old.

What has not aged is the fundamental principles of learning. Learning must relate to business strategy, performance targets, and personal goals. What is important is the not the learning per se but doing that results from the learning.

On the other hand, what has changed is the skillset required at the workplace. What has also changed is the way the workforce prefers to learn those skills.

Power to the learner

Today change is speedy, the flow of knowledge is speedy, so learning must be too. Jane Hart points out that instead of being hierarchical and top-down, “modern learning is very bottom-up, self-organized, self-managed, self-facilitated, and autonomous.”

Top learning tools are no longer the traditional learning tools. The modern professional learns in very many ways. The organization must support that. Trainers can no longer be just classroom teachers. They must become facilitators, enablers, and guides.

Today’s employees are quite capable of learning new skills and moving into higher-priority positions. According to an analysis, “many employees who have moved into ‘emerging roles’ over the past five years came from entirely different occupations. For example, half of the employees who moved into data science and artificial intelligence (AI) roles were coming from unrelated industries. That number jumps when we look at engineering roles (67%), content roles (72%), and sales roles (75%). What is even more interesting is that the people who transitioned into data and AI had the largest variation in skill profiles, with half of them possessing skills with low similarity.”

Learning must adapt to serve the modern generation’s needs, here and now. According to the LinkedIn study, while older generations of learners are focused more on developing their soft skills, like communication and leadership, “Gen Z employees are spending their time learning how to be more productive and on business and technology basics—from learning how to code Python to understanding online marketing foundations.”

Not just conversion, but a fresh experience

A poll conducted in early December 2021 revealed that for an equal proportion (39%) of organizations, modernization meant conversion of instructor-led training (ILT) to its virtual version (VILT) or repurposing for learning experience platforms (LxP) and/or mobile (39%). While 13% opted for conversion of Flash to HTML5, only 8% thought transforming events to campaigns amounted to modernization.

Like those who responded to that poll, we at Upside Learning believe there is more to modernization. It is not all about upgrading technology or porting lessons from a defunct platform to a modern one.

When we tailor a learning experience for you at Upside Learning, you are assured of an instructionally sound learning experience rooted in your business needs. It is enriched by apt visual style, media treatment, and screen composition. It shall facilitate meaningful, contextualized interactions.

We study the subject matter, the learning and performance ecosystem, expected performance outcome, and how well we can match the learning with the learners’ profile. We revisit the purpose of the learning, redesign the media, and repurpose content for a modern, digitalized learning experience.

It is about purposeful chunking of content, retaining only what is essential for learning. We design components with a human touch. We also focus on the quality of interaction—employee-content as well as employee-instructor. We use several components depending on the need, ranging from audio files to comic strips to gaming scenarios.

We help you identify learning material that must be retained, analyze your training needs to know what must change and use proven processes to complete the conversion.

Ongoing process, not a one-time project

The coronavirus is the cause of many ills but learning digitalization and modernization is not one of them.

David Collings and John McMackin of Dublin City University Business School observe that organizations were already struggling to keep pace with the new skills demanded by the shift to digital business models. “The pandemic accelerated those trends, putting an increased premium on learning and development (L&D) as a means of equipping companies to handle both long-term challenges and short-term crises.”

We do not know if the ambitious 15-ton, 8-feet difference engine developed by Charles Babbage, some 200 years ago, would have gone on to help workplace learning. We do know that the device preferred by today’s learner to connect, entertain, and learn, also fits into the back pocket. Who knows, tomorrow’s worker may just need to clap hands to call up the appropriate virtual retinal display to perform a tricky maintenance task.

In terms of utility and impact, what is current today maybe antique tomorrow. That is what makes digitalization and modernization a continual process and not a one-time project.

Vintage wine is expensive. So is vintage learning. If you let your learning stay “good old” and ferment it for long, it can be very expensive for your business.

Download Digitalization and modernization of learning: Equip yourself to conquer the change constant to know more and to get started.

The post Modern workplace learning needs new wine in new bottle first appeared on The Upside Learning Blog.

“The world has nearly ended. The only two humans left are battling huge waves at a place that was once a desert. Their only hope is to configure and activate a device that will beam an SOS to the nearest inhabited asteroid. Tom, the older of the two, has been through many catastrophes and survived, but now he is done. He knows he has only moments left. He turns to Chad to go ahead and fire up the device and asks, ‘You know how to set it up, right?’ ‘Of course,’ Chad replies, ‘I have seen the video.'”

That bit of script is unlikely to make it to Netflix. If it does, I will certainly watch it, at least until some other movie distracts me and I browse away. I may not wait to see the end, but I will always wonder; if Chad had bothered to learn hands-on and practiced enough like old Tom, could he have saved the world? Confession: I am a great fan of Netflix. I just don’t fancy it as a model for workplace learning.

Netflix: Great For Entertainment, Not For Education

Jared Cooney Horvath, cognitive neuroscientist, and author of Stop Talking, Start Influencing: 12 Ideas from Brain Science to Make Your Message Stick, agrees. He is focused on college education, but his observations are equally relevant for workplace learning. Talking about binge-watching, he writes, “research has revealed that when you cram an entire season of a television show into a single sitting, you will forget about 80% of everything you watched within 72 hours.” While students might pass their courses, “it all but guarantees they won’t retain what they’ve learned for longer than a week. In a very real sense, the Netflix model in education allows people to earn degrees without the ability to recall fundamental facts and concepts.” Are you listening, Chad?

Horvath observes that jumping back and forth among tasks is what passes for multitasking. “Online learning platforms actively encourage multitasking by including live chat, message boards, and linked content, and by allowing multiple internet tabs to be open simultaneously.” Learners might hone their social (media) skills, but “at the expense of a deep comprehension of why each activity matters.”

Then there is the malady that I suffer from when I am staring at Netflix: choice paralysis. It “leads people to place more emphasis on the act of choosing than on the final choice itself.” Horvath recommends the first lesson for new learners should be “how to learn.” Leaving students to weed through academic offerings with no clear sense of direction or progression is probably not the best strategy in education. In fact, this practice does little to ensure that graduates will complete, understand, or even seek out core curricula relevant to specific fields. That holds true for workplace learners, too. Only when learners truly understand how “information is embedded, understood, and applied can they be expected to succeed in a largely self-directed digital landscape.”

Passive Watching Versus Active Practice

As I understand it, if the objective is to force or entice learners to gorge on Netflix-like content from their LMS, that is not learning. The key missing element is practice—the actual doing, which is the only way to build the ability to act correctly at the right time in the real world. We need to think about the proficiency levels we expect from learners and develop the learning accordingly. Yes, it might include some videos by design but cannot be made up of only of one or more videos. During a recent discussion on the subject, Heika Bauer saw a role for the Netflix approach, if easily accessible and digestible content could help ignite that spark, trigger an individual’s wish to learn, remind them of forgotten skills, and motivate them to engage in practical activities [1].

Eran Adi Cioban did not want to place his learners in front of a huge collection of learning possibilities so that they were dependent on an algorithm to make a selection [2]. Instead, he wanted them “to be active and inquiring when they choose what they should learn.” He pointed out that several organizations “fall into the illusion that breaking content into smaller pieces and posting it on an LXP is learning. Little do they know that a wall is a wall regardless of the number of bricks in it. We don’t want to build walls but rather to break them and use the bricks for other, more useful, causes.”

Martin Brooks observed that knowledge does not translate into value unless there is high-quality application, which only comes from practice [3]. He quoted Bruce Lee to drive home the point: “I fear not the man who knows 10,000 kicks and has practiced them all once, but I do fear the man who knows one kick and has practiced it 10,000 times.”

Mitchel MacNair went nuclear in his argument [4]. “Coming from a background of training sailors to safely operate nuclear power plants in ships and submarines in the US Navy, I can tell you that the most efficient methodology I’ve ever seen for developing expertise starts with some basic knowledge but quickly progresses to supervised practice—and lots of it. We could take an 18-year-old fresh out of high school and teach them to safely operate a nuclear power plant within a year. It is a thoroughly tested and proven methodology that takes someone from a new hire to an independent individual contributor in the shortest amount of time possible—real bottom-line results for any organization.” MacNair believes in practice. “You can’t microwave the building of expertise by watching lots of videos, but you can certainly accelerate it with supervised practice. You have heard ‘practice makes perfect,’ but the more correct phrase is ‘practice makes permanent.’ Supervised practice is critical in situations where you need people to consistently perform tasks in a certain way.”

The War For Attention

We Are Teachers lists 60 of the best educational shows on Netflix. It is a wonderful list, and I wish I had had the opportunity to see some of those shows when I was in school! Yet, these are not substitutes for the regular curriculum, including lab work and sports practice.

Wade a little deeper, and you will come across tantalizing listicles like “7 movies on Netflix all entrepreneurs should watch,” “5 best Netflix movies for business startups,” and “Build a better business: Watch these 6 Netflix movies.” I have no dispute with the selections (already added some to my watchlist!), but I am yet to come across an entrepreneur who became successful, a startup that took off well, or a business that got better thanks to Netflix, or more precisely, a handful of movies on the platform.

Nick Hernandez, CEO of 360Learning explains why the Netflix approach remains a recurring dream [5]. “The world is changing quickly, and companies need to adapt their operations to keep up. The constant flux results in a heavy burden on learning teams, who need to make sure each employee receives the most relevant training at the right time. An engaging learning channel that gets employees ‘addicted to learning’ seems like a quick fix.” He hastens to add that it is a false promise because most learning platforms can’t replicate Netflix’s activation and retention strategies.

With most employees at home and free to consume any kind of data on demand, it boils down to a war for attention. The learning manager might want to crack the whip and impose a completion date, but the learners decide what is worthy of their time and attention. The bosses may set goals, but performance is left to the will of the learners. In the absence of an engaging, productive, in-person mix of practice and evaluation, learning teams are “wildly unprepared to wage this battle in the war for employees’ attention.” Also, to activate consumers, “you need to give them a powerful reason to start engaging.” Learning budgets cannot begin to match the star value and production prowess of Netflix.

Too Many Options Drown The Learning Goal

Steve Goldberg is convinced that workplace learning does not need Netflix. “The application of what you learn in a Netflix context is essentially random. It’s stored in the back of your head and if it ever becomes relevant, it becomes relevant. Corporate learners usually have a specific goal of ‘I want to learn how to do x to achieve y,’ it’s not something they want to keep in the back of their head.” While Goldberg rightly supports the need to make learning “engaging and enjoyable,” that should be just one aspect of the enterprise’s learning strategy. But the main pillar should still be “the practical application of learning for the purpose of enhancing your skill repertoire, progressing your career and creating new sources of value for your employer.” While the Netflix algorithm may try to assess your taste and offer selections, it must also offer ample options to keep you hooked. On the other hand, the needs of enterprise learners are usually better defined. “Drowning them in options isn’t best practice when there are just one or two options that solve their problem and let them get back to work,” Goldberg points out.

I am among those who open Netflix, click endlessly, and then shut it down without really having watched anything. A recent blog by Seth Godin suggests that I should instead go for a walk [6]. “Wandering around in a digital swamp is a pretty common way to spend an hour these days. Alas, most of us would never consider doing this in a forest. Walking over to a tree because it looked sort of interesting, standing there for a minute, then wandering away. Tree after tree, for hours. The thing is, digital wandering is mostly a waste. It doesn’t free our imagination; it stifles it. It’s as if this digital version of a tree has made us stressed out as a goal….the next time we consider wasting an afternoon clicking on whatever baits us, perhaps it might make sense going for a walk instead.” By chasing the Netflix illusion, are we missing the learning tree for the streaming woods?

This article was first published on eLearning Industry:

elearningindustry.com/its-fun-but-is-netflix-right-for-workplace-learning

The post It’s Fun, But Is Netflix Right For Workplace Learning? first appeared on The Upside Learning Blog.

I accepted a new position as a Director. Upon arrival my first day, I was informed that “Corporate” did not approve my position and though it would not affect my pay, my title was going to be “Nurse Manager.” It made no sense. After breaking the news to me I was led to my office and then my new boss left stating, “Get settled in.”

I sat at my new desk staring at bare walls for the next three hours. Finally, my phone rang, and my boss said, “Meet me in the cafeteria for lunch.” I have never been so grateful for a phone call.

At lunch, I asked if I could visit the units I would be tasked with running. “No, we have not told the leaders that you are taking them over. We want you to keep a low profile until the logistics are worked out.”

I spent the afternoon staring at bare walls. Finally, 5pm arrived and I left my first day without speaking to anyone, confused by the entire episode. I regretted accepting the position.

That is an excerpt from what Keith Albert wrote three years ago. Now we are amid the Great Resignation and, hopefully, organizations have an altogether different approach to onboarding.

Onboarding is no longer is just the routine of welcoming a new employee and expecting them to stick around, regardless. Instead, at least in woke companies, the process involves a carefully structured plan that can last a year and involve many people in multiple functions—with Learning and Development leading the way with the gamification of eLearning.

Why onboarding matters

According to Brandon Hall Group’s Impact of Strategic Onboarding Study, companies suffer a 12% voluntary attrition among new hires and most attrition occurs within the first six months in 51% of companies.

Not surprisingly, onboarding is a top business priority today. Mark Stein and Lilith Christiansen, authors of Successful Onboarding^[1] affirm: “Successful onboarding is far more than traditional orientation in new clothes; it is an innovative strategic program that can boost a company’s bottom line and improve its future prospects.”

They caution: “When top-notch people…become disillusioned, a firm’s brand becomes tarnished in the eyes of prospective employees…and it becomes even more difficult to attract the best talent.” The need is to “excite new hires so that they feel motivated to address their challenges enthusiastically.”

Effective onboarding is a win-win for both employers and the employees. While companies gain from “onboarding margin,” employees appreciate the opportunity not just to earn a paycheck but also to attain respect, achievement, and “self-actualization.”

The book names the four pillars of successful onboarding.

• Talking about the organization’s values and work culture “results in happier, better-adjusted employees who work effectively.”
• Before they have a chance to pass judgment on their decision to join, “new hires need to make the right connections.”
• Often used as a late-careerreward, career development can be a “powerful means” to achieve loyalty when integrated into onboarding.
• Most importantly, new employees need to be briefed about business strategy because “the more versed employees become in the strategy, the more they begin to regard their everyday work through that lens.”

According to research by Glassdoor, employees who rate their onboarding experience as “highly effective” are 18 times more likely to feel highly committed to the organization; 91% of them feel strong connectedness at work; 89% feel strongly integrated into the company culture; 49% contribute to the team within the first week. That’s what makes onboarding a serious business investment.

Welcome the gamers

In 2019, there were 2.5 billion gamers, one-third of the world’s population and growing at over 5% year-on-year. They spent more than 7 hours a week playing video games. Those in the 26-35 age group made up 40% of the gamers and were most likely to play at work. The average gamer was 34 years old. Adult women (33%) players outnumbered boys under 18 (17%) when it came to video games. As much as 46% of the gamers were female (average age 34; male average age 32). And they have been playing for at least 16 years.

(More on gamification of workplace learning here.)

Chances are most members of your team are avid gamers, as are those who are planning to get on board. While welcoming them, why not serve them the flavor they like most—gaming!

Experts predict that increased use of gamified onboarding programs will make it more exciting for new recruits to get to know the company, performance expectations, and how best to meet those. Team games can facilitate interactions and quickly establish connections, minimizing the awkward phase of integration. Gamified onboarding can also help eliminate bias while onboarding.

Learning management systems (LMS) will have a greater degree of gamification, making it possible for organizations to leverage the power of productive competition, and track employees’ progress to better match efforts and achievements with rewards.

As the Brandon Hall report puts it, gamification helps meet the dauting challenge of increasing “knowledge retention and employee engagement while shortening the time it takes to get people up and running.” It can “engage learners in the onboarding experience and help them retain more information.”

According to the onboarding study (May 2021), “13% of companies currently use gamification in onboarding, and 34% say they plan to add it over the next 12 months or so.”

Among companies already using gamification for onboarding, 62% say their new-hire engagement is up (versus 48% of those that do not use gamification); 47% say their new-hire retention is up (30%); and 55% have shortened time-to-proficiency (30%).

In his book², Karl Kapp observes: “Games provide the license to think outside of normal parameters, to add a little bit of fantasy or surrealism, and to force people to think in different ways.” Gamification presents an engaging aesthetic interface to learners, including new hires. It is an intensely motivational method for conveying corporate training and education.

Get a running start

Even those organizations that are convinced about the power of gamified onboarding at times wonder if gamification would turn out to be an expensive, time-consuming reinvention of the learning wheel already in place.

This is what Animesh Kumar, President – HR & Transformation at Zee Entertainment says: “Our learning at ZEE while building the digital induction module by gamifying company values and competencies, is that one needs to ‘sweat the design’ for the entire learning process to be powerful and successful.”

The ideal solution to get going would be to start with a template or framework that can be easily customized to fit their onboarding needs.

For example, this framework for gamified induction has a series of themes ranging from space exploration to cyberpunk that can shape your narrative. The framework brings together sleek, minimal screen layouts for content with a library of layouts. It also has an assortment of game mechanics that can selected to amplify your narrative and enrich the induction experience.

Animesh Kumar is happy to have used the framework. “Keeping gamification at its core, the framework designed by Upside Learning, intrigued teams across levels, deeply engaging them with the digital induction module. The impact created by this experience is one that transformed our entire outlook towards designing learning and development modules for employees across the organization.”

If Keith starts a new job today, he probably would be welcomed with gifts and grand announcements on social media. He may not notice how bare the walls are because he would be too engrossed to look up from the laptop, enjoying and absorbing his gamified onboarding. And at the cafeteria, he is likely to tell his manager, “I have a fair idea what is going on in the units. I think I should lie low for a while and wait for the right time to take over.”

After all gamification is not about entertaining diversion. It is about focused initiation.

The post Can gamification level up your employee onboarding experience and boost outcome? first appeared on The Upside Learning Blog.

Not many of us in learning and development get to keep as many balls in the air as Dr Gawande proficiently does but let us relook at the two reasons for our fallibility.

What if we have an efficient checklist but neither our memory nor our skill is equipped to save the ship? How can a checklist help if are faced with an uncommon situation and our learning is not durable enough to adapt when it matters most?

What and why of durable learning

Durability is integral to the very definition of learning by Gagné and Medsker²: “Learning is the relatively permanent change in human capability or disposition that is not ascribable simply to the processes of growth.”

The MDPI Encyclopedia describes deep, meaningful learning as “higher-order thinking and development through manifold active intellectual engagement aiming at meaning construction through pattern recognition and concept association. It includes inquiry, critical thinking, creative thinking, problem-solving, and metacognitive skills….Its achievement is verified through knowledge application in authentic contexts.”

It goes on to describe the hierarchy of six conceptions of learning as developed by F. Marton and R. Säaljö of Sweden.

In his book, Stellan Ohlsson³ describes deep learning as the ability to perform essential, non-monotonic, cognitive development and change. He identifies three categories of non-monotonic mental shift:

1. Capability to produce new solutions to problems and reach creative insights.
2. Adaptation of cognitive competencies through repetitive experimentation.
3. Shift in values and perceptions through critical thinking.

This is how Make It Stick⁴describes it: “Durable, robust learning requires that we do two things. First, as we recode and consolidate new material from short-term memory into long-term memory, we must anchor it there securely. Second, we must associate the material with a diverse set of cues that will make us adept at recalling the knowledge later. Having effective retrieval cues is an aspect of learning that often goes overlooked. The task is more than committing knowledge to memory. Being able to retrieve it when we need it is just as important.”  

When you are on the podium, it is always reassuring to pull out a few cards with your notes. However, the notes can only fill in momentary gaps in the flow. Before you test the mic, you need to know the subject and the audience very well.

If a piece of timely, disposable learning, maybe in the form of a paper, an app, or a QR code, or any other avatar of microlearning can help ensure that retrieval happens, we can certainly avoid an error of ineptitude. However, if the fundamental learning has not been durable, ignorance will impede performance when it matters most.

The sequence is clear: durable first, disposable next.

Achieving durable learning

In their playbook for NGOs, Accenture recommends the application of eight principles to achieve durable learning. These are relevant to every learning program, whatever be the format or platform.

Durable learning, assured workplace performance

Even before the virus shook up the world, disruption was the order of the day. In today’s workplace, while learning needs to endure, performance is crucial. Only deep, durable learning can prepare one for the flexibility essential to respond and adapt to the unknown.

Perhaps in no other field is durable learning as critical as in medical education. Not surprisingly, the lack of durable learning in the first years affects students and junior doctors around the globe and poses a challenge to medical education.

Evidence-based learning strategies have been prescribed as a remedy to address the malady. These include the time-tested approaches to durable corporate learning: spaced retrieval, spaced learning, interleaving, dual coding, concrete examples, metacognition, elaboration, and generation.

According to Matthew Daniel, “the heavy focus on short-term ROI and the delivery of narrow skill sets oft-evangelized in L&D circles may well be the source of the ‘skills shortage’ industries face today. Approaching training from a durable-skills-first perspective empowers talent to make dynamic, longer-term contributions to an organization.”

He classifies skills into perishable (half-life of less than 2.5 years), semi-durable (up to 7.5 years) and durable (more than 7.5 years).

 

Matthew Daniel

He recommends a tree-shaped model for skill development. “The T-shaped skills development model that accounted for a grounding of soft skills and a deep-dive into a set of hard skills has been more recently modified into an E-shaped model that allowed for multiple levels of deep expertise. But a tree-shaped model may be a more powerful and effective way of thinking through skill development: Durable skills form the roots of the tree, with semi-durable frameworks forming the branches, and more perishable skills coming and going like the leaves with the changing seasons. Our task is to grow a tree that is tall and wide, and flourishes in every season, feeding the roots that keep the tree steady, growing branches of new expertise, and fostering the leaves that change with the passage of time.”

Use deep learning to save lives? Check ✓

On January 15, 2009, Captain Chesley Sullenberger of US Airways Flight 1549 made an emergency landing on the Hudson River, saving all 155 lives and making history.⁵ With both engines crippled by bird strike, he was instructed by air traffic controllers to go for the nearest airport. He calmly informed he would be unable to reach that and instead chose the Hudson within seconds. That was the Captain Sullenberger’s deep learning at work.

Elliott Masie⁶ urges “focus on rigorous readiness measures. It is not about memorizing the steps—it is the ability to DO IT—and increasingly that will include prompted steps.” Indeed! Mere memorizing of steps would be shallow learning.

He attributes Captain Sullenberger’s feat to one such prompted step—checklists. “When Sully Sullenberger landed the plane on the Hudson River–in 205 seconds from birds to water, he used checklists for readiness—not his memory.”

I would like to differ here, slightly. Sully did use the checklists for readiness but all the actions he took in landing the plane was from his durable learning. The captain who is empowered with durable learning and endowed with experience is the one who saves lives. Yes, those lives trust the captain to make use of the right checklist at the right time to validate his (or her) memory. Another tricky situation might require another checklist but the same foundation of durable learning that is deep, adaptable, and creative.

We cannot afford any error of ineptitude when we are mid-air, using the scalpel or deciding the strategy for a new market.

If you wish to have a one-on-one chat about durable learning in the workplace or have specific feedback that you would like to discuss, please drop a note at elearning@upsidelearning.com.

The post Deep, durable learning ensures adept, adaptable workplace performance first appeared on The Upside Learning Blog.

By Arshiya Urveeja Bose – Flickr, CC BY 2.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=17238490

Wikipedia tells me a living root bridge is a simple suspension bridge formed of living plant roots. If the tree remains healthy, the roots will grow thick and strong. New roots will grow throughout the tree’s life and must be pruned or manipulated to strengthen the bridge.

What is equally fascinating is how this is so much like my other lifelong passion—learning! From not having the knowledge and the skills, you cross over ready and raring to perform that task. Perhaps, it was no accident that when we wanted a graphic representation for learning engagement while we were working on the guide, the team suggested a bridge!

Getting to the root of learning engagement

Think of today’s workplace learner. You give them the good old lessons, lectures and, of course, presentations. How do you get their whole-minded, hands-on involvement without the yawning?

Now think of an organization in today’s business environment. They would rather have the learners emerging all set to take on challenges old and new.

The answer to both lies in learning engagement. David Jonassen said it right in Learning to Solve Problems, that the only legitimate cognitive goal of education especially in corporate training is problem solving, which he describes as the “most authentic” and the “most relevant” learning activity. Knowledge designed to solve problems is “better comprehended, retained, and therefore more transferable”.

He goes on to make a strong case for learning engagement. “Meaningful learning cannot occur until and unless learners manifest an intention to learn. All human behavior is goal-driven. The clearer our goals are for learning, the more likely we are to learn meaningfully and mindfully.”

We must build that bridge right and strong.

The pillars of learning engagement

Learning science tells us that learning engagement rests on two pillars: motivation and practice.

Motivation is the starting point. Right from the beginning, it is important to maintain motivation levels throughout the learning intervention with appropriate learning design.

There is no learning without practice; there is no performance without practice. Simulations or scenarios can fill in for real situations, but practice is a must. What works best is spaced practice and staggered retrieval. And interleaving practice sessions.

Why must I learn? Adults needs to understand the relevance of what they do. Making the context of learning clear right at the outset and ensuring every learner has understood that goes a long way to promote motivation and, hence, engagement. Personalization makes the purpose of learning relevant to the learner.

Elizabeth and Robert Bjork, who first drew attention to the importance of desirable difficulties observe that “conditions that create challenges and slow the rate of apparent learning often optimize long-term retention and transfer”. These include: “varying the conditions of learning, rather than keeping them constant and predictable; interleaving instruction on separate topics, rather than grouping instruction by topic (called blocking); spacing, rather than massing study sessions; and using tests, rather than presentations, as study events.”

Meaningful activity is an essential ingredient of learning engagement. The activity should make the learners consider multiple options and pick the one they think can best the challenge. Activity makes learners take the right decisions and execute realistic actions.

Then there is feedback. Feedback must consider the level of the learner’s skill or knowledge and be delivered at the right time. Explanatory feedback would greatly help novice learners, but multiple consequence-based feedback sessions work best before the final judgmental feedback.

Learning, so like living roots

Going back to Meghalaya, those roots keep growing and must be pruned and manipulated to keep the bridge strong. Just like modern workplace learning! The learning does not end with the program. It must continue to grow and adapt to ford evolving challenges, safely and securely.

Those bridges are very much part of the ecosystem. Just as learning ought to be in the business ecosystem. And just as learning engagement ought to be in bridging individual capability and business goal.

The post The Living Root Bridge of Learning Engagement first appeared on The Upside Learning Blog.

Later, Tom would explain: “Yes, I attended the training on fire safety. I know all about the different types of fires and the right extinguisher for each.” Strangely, Tom had never once used a real extinguisher on a real fire.

Fortunately, the story is not real. What is real is the need for performing complete, authentic tasks during workplace learning. In real life, Tom could have perhaps limited the damage to a molten wastepaper basket had he, during his training, also used an extinguisher to put out a demo fire.

Real or simulated, make tasks authentic

Yes, they must know that an oil fire is not the same as an electrical fire and that there are five types of fire extinguishers to deal with six classes of fire. What would make the training complete is the task of taking the right extinguisher off the wall, and then using the PASS technique correctly—pull, aim, squeeze and sweep.

That is an example of an authentic task. And that is also an example of holistic learning. Both of which combine to fire up learning engagement.

Yes, the usual academic questions (picking true or false, matching, filling in blanks and so on) might still be useful. However, as Michael Allen notes in his Guide to e-Learning, “they do not create engaging learning activities. Because they look at isolated points of knowledge, they frequently provide little of the critical performance context.”

Instead, learning tasks must be authentic, “they must relate directly to the effective performance of tasks on the job. Authentic tasks are far more appealing than almost any rhetorical or academic task. They heighten our propensity to get involved. And that’s what we are after: involvement, engagement, and learning—the kind of learning that leads to success.”

Parts make not the whole task

Most workplace learning breaks the whole task into a set of separate learning objectives to ease the perceived cognitive load. Each easy-to-digest segment by itself does not make the whole authentic task. It would be more meaningful if the learners had the whole picture, especially when it comes to learning complex skills.

As Patti Shank notes in her book Practice and Feedback for Deeper Learning, “complex skills are not simply the sum of their parts.”

She adds: “In complex tasks, there are typically many organizational and coordination issues. When we teach the skills separately, these may not be obvious. People best transfer to the job what they learn from training when we train using whole-skill practice—not by breaking practice into constituent parts and only practicing the parts.”

Too much fragmentation discourages learning engagement. It might even make it difficult for the learner to put things in perspective and relate to the whole task. Therefore, complex learning requires awareness of the context of the whole authentic task for maximum engagement during the learning.

Ladder learning step by step

Mirjam Neelen and Paul A. Kirschner cite the example of learning to use a ladder on a windy day to wash a second-floor window to stress the importance of getting the whole picture first. When you focus on choosing the right ladder, you are likely to be unmindful of the tricky part of carrying a bucket up, as the wind buffets you.

Instead, more authentically, the ultimate task of washing windows in adverse conditions could be broken down into a worked-out example, as Neelen and Kirschner have done, making it easier for the learner to relate to and engage with it. The learners need to come up with answers to questions like:

Which different ladders are available for which situations? What do you look for when using the ladder? What tends to be easily overlooked? Given the windy conditions, how do you recognize hazardous situations when inspecting and using the ladder, carrying up the water-filled bucket, and while washing the windows?

Whether we are learning to fight a fire or wash windows, authentic tasks, with a holistic perspective make for the best learning.

The post Authentic, holistic tasks ensure engaged, applicable learning first appeared on The Upside Learning Blog.