Rubber bands and chewing gum

Are you a hacker?

I don’t mean the type of person who leaks the diplomatic cables of the United States government (but curiously, not of the Russian or Ecuadorian governments).

Nor do I mean the heroes who disrupt the education of children.

No – by “hacker” I mean the type of person who gets the job done, come hell or high water. Someone who refuses to accept barriers, but rather expects them; and if they can’t smash them, they climb over them, dig under them, or drill through them.

According to Oxford professor Paulo Savaget, people who adopt a hacker mentality at work enjoy the process of finding work-arounds. Which, I’m sorry to concede, does not represent everyone in the Learning & Development profession.

Over the course of my career, I’ve witnessed a lot of talk among my peers about what should and shouldn’t be done to improve learning outcomes and hence business performance… but not a lot of action.

And I’ve heard all the excuses to justify it: “I haven’t been trained in that”; “We don’t have the technology”; “We don’t have the right culture”. Which again I’m sorry to concede, I’ve been quick to judge as symptoms of ineptitude, laziness or apathy.

Then an article by Eikris Biala caught my eye: What’s more important than learning theory? Intrigued by the headline, I read her piece and the following quote resonated:

“It slowly dawned on me that, while learning theory is important, so too is challenging the limiting beliefs of our learning community.”

She cited the example of coaches changing the behaviour of online course developers, and to me that underscores the inclusivity of the phrase “learning community” – it includes we L&D professionals alongside our target audience.

And so it dawned on me that it’s not necessarily ineptitude, laziness or apathy that stops many of us from making it happen. It could be the lack of belief we have in our own abilities.

When you’re aware of your limiting beliefs, you recognise them as a barrier to your innovation and productivity. Eikris goes on to provide advice on how to overcome this self-imposition, which I would supplement with: Give it a go.

Convert your idea into action, even if it’s tiny and imperfect.

Use rubber bands and chewing gum if that’s all you have. This expression is usually used in its derogative sense – whereby something that should be solid and reliable is rather patchy and prone to break – but I mean it in its most proactive sense, whereby offering something is better than wallowing with nothing.

Professor Savaget calls it the power of a “good enough” solution. You diminish your fear of failure because it’s not meant to be the final deliverable. Instead, it’s a proof of concept that releases the pressure of hitting a home run on your first attempt by earning success in stages.

To paraphrase an expression of my own that I articulated a long time ago and has fuelled me ever since:

Don’t tell me why it won’t work. Tell me how it can.

Violets are blue

When I pressed the Publish button on Roses are red, it capstoned a year of semantics for me which spilled over into this year.

In addition to my annual list of conferences in Australia for digital educators, I applied my cognitive surplus to another nine posts that dive deeper into the murky waters of meaning.

• In Double defence I pondered the defensive value of so-called “skills of the future”, while in Skills of the present I recognised their value for offense.
   
• In Great and small I reshaped our pedagogical terminology.
   
• In Higher Assessment I proposed a new role for universities.
   
• In Space invaders I untangled terms relating to the spacing effect, while in Time pilot I extended the coverage to interleaving.
   
• In Gold vibes only I borrowed a mantra coined by the great Patty Mills and applied it to organisational culture.
   
• In The apex of innovation I isolated a variable that’s critical to continuous improvement.
   
• In The $100 hypothetical I compared can’t with won’t.

I’m keen to hear your views among mine, so feel free to add a comment to each of the conversations.

If you already have, I salute you!

The $100 Hypothetical

As my home state emerges from lockdown, I reflect over the many months of confusion during the pandemic.

My fellow citizens were confounded by brain benders such as whether to wear a mask inside a ride-share vehicle; what qualifies as an “essential” item; and when one may travel beyond 5km from home.

No confusion over the Dine & Discover voucher scheme, however, whereby residents apply for $100 worth of credit to fund eligible recreation activities. As a populace, we nailed that one.

It is – by definition – an exemplar of the $100 Hypothetical.

The $100 Hypothetical is best explained by way of contrast.

In the context of corporate learning & development, consider the employee who complains of being overwhelmed by the number of search results returned by the online course library, yet happily uses Google which returns billions of results.

Who never posts messages to the corporate ESN, but avidly posts to Facebook; who never records a knowledge sharing video, yet uploads selfies to TikTok or Instagram with abandon; who refuses to use a software program until they’ve been formally trained in it, but jumps headfirst into a new app, phone or video game without ever crinkling the user manual.

The $100 Hypothetical holds that the same employee would readily find a relevant course in the online library …if they received $100 for doing so.

Similarly, they’d post plenty of messages to the corporate ESN, record loads of knowledge sharing videos, and find out how to do various tasks with the software …if each time they received a couple of pineapples.

The alternative

The $100 Hypothetical makes the point that whenever people don’t do something, it’s often not because they can’t, but because they won’t.

Which begs the question: Why not?

Well I’m not aware of anyone attending a course prior to using the likes of Google, Facebook, TikTok or Insta, so a lack of training evidently isn’t always a barrier to action. There must be other reasons; perhaps shyness, fear, laziness, apathy, pride, or myriad other human foibles.

Yet while it’s tempting to decry the poor attitudes of our colleagues, it’s important to recognise the common denominator: value.

They use Google because it connects them to the information they need. They post to Facebook because it enriches their relationship with friends and family. They upload selfies to TikTok or Insta because it’s fun or it boosts their ego. They figure out apps, phones and video games on the fly because they want to experience them immediately.

But they don’t perceive the value in pursuing similar activities at work.

If the theory of the $100 Hypothetical maintains the introduction of a financial reward would tip the balance in favour of action, the practice must be to supply an alternative source of value in the absence of direct cash.

In other words, what would motivate them to do it if they didn’t receive $100 for doing so?

Collateral damage

The L&D community may be divided into two camps: (1) Those for whom the mere mention of learning styles makes their blood boil; and (2) Those who are inexplicably unaware of the hullabaloo and are thus oblivious to the aforementioned boiling of blood.

The antagonism stems from the popularity of learning styles in the educational discourse – not to mention vocational curricula – despite a lack of empirical evidence supporting their effectiveness when incorporated into instructional design. The argument is that in the absence of such evidence, don’t waste time and money trying to match your teaching style to everyone’s learning styles; instead, divert that energy towards other, evidence-based pedagogy.

This is sound advice.

Nonetheless, I urge my peers not to throw the baby out with the bath water. By this I mean regardless of the existence or impact of learning styles, a phenomenon that enjoys universal recognition is that of learner preferences. And I fear it may be an unintended casualty of the war on learning styles.

For example, a deduction from the literature might be that a teacher need not tailor his or her delivery to meet the needs of the audience. Since learning styles are bunk, I can do what I like because it won’t make a difference anyway. Such a view is conveniently teacher centric, and it flies in the face of the thought leadership on learner centeredness that we have advanced so far. Sure, the deduction may be unreasonable, but extremists rarely listen to reason.

However, a more insidious factor is the dominance of the literature on formal learning. Studies of the impact of learning styles are typically based on teaching in a classroom setting, often in the K12 sector. Furthermore, the statistics are based on scores achieved via formal assessment. Yet we know in the workplace the vast majority of learning is informal.

Let me illustrate my concern here with a personal example. When I need to find out how to perform a particular task in a particular software program, I strongly prefer text-based instructions over video. I’m annoyed by having to play a clip, wait for it to load, and then wait for the presenter to get to the bit that is relevant to me. Instead, I prefer to scan the step-by-step instructions at my own speed and get on with it.

Now, if only video was available and I weren’t such a diligent employee, I might postpone the task or forget about it all together. Yet if you were to put me in a classroom, force me to watch the video, then test my ability to perform the task – sure, I’ll ace it. But that’s not the point.

The point is that the learner’s preference hasn’t been taken into account in the instructional design, and that can affect his performance in the real world.

If you don’t agree with me, perhaps because you happen to like video, suppose a manual was the only form of instruction available. Would you read it? Perhaps you would because you are a diligent employee.

Isn’t everyone?

In case your blood is beginning to boil, let me emphasise: (1) Learning styles appear to have no significant effect on learning outcomes; and (2) The nature of the content probably dictates its most effective mode of delivery.

If we assume that learning styles are highly correlated with learner preferences – indeed, for some they are synonymous – then we might be tempted to conclude that learner preferences have no significant effect on learning outcomes. I consider this a false conclusion.

Indeed in a controlled environment, learner preferences don’t really matter. The participants are forced to do it whether they like it or not, or they somehow feel obliged to comply.

Outside of the controlled environment, however, learner preferences do matter. We sometimes see this in formal settings (which is why universities enforce a minimum percentage of lecture attendance), but it appears most starkly in informal settings where the learner is empowered to do it or not. If they don’t like doing it, odds are they won’t.

So we need to be mindful of the interaction between pedagogical effectiveness and learner preference. An experience that your learners love but is ineffective is ultimately worthless. But so too is an experience that is effective but your learners loathe.

As a profession we need to aim for experiences that are both effective and liked by our audience – or at the very least, don’t turn them away.

A framework for content curation

In conversation at EduTECH earlier this month, Harold Jarche evoked George E. P. Box’s quote that “all models are wrong, but some are useful”.

Of course, the purpose of a model is to simplify a complex system so that something purposeful can be done within it. By definition, then, the model can only ever be an approximation of reality; by human error, furthermore, it won’t be as approximate as it could be.

Nevertheless, if we accept the inherent variability in (and fallibility of) the model, we can achieve a much better outcome by using it than by not.

It is with this in mind that I have started thinking about a model – or perhaps more accurately, a framework – for content curation.

I have grown weary of hotchpotch lists of resources that we L&D pro’s tend to cobble together. Sure, they may be thoughtfully filtered and informatively annotated, but a hotchpotch is a hotchpotch. I should know: I’ve used them as a student, I’ve seen my peers create them, and I’ve created them myself.

Surely we can put more design into our curation efforts so that the fruits of our labour are more efficient, meaningful, and effective…?

Consider the trusty instructional design heuristic of Tell Me, Show Me, Let Me, Test Me. As far as heuristics go, I’ve found this to be a good one. It reminds us that transmission is ineffective on its own; learners really need to see the concept in action and give it a go themselves. As the Chinese saying goes, “Tell me and I forget. Show me and I remember. Involve me and I understand.” *

* Truisms such as this one are typically met with suspicion from certain quarters of the L&D community, but in this case the research on the comparative efficacies of lectures, worked examples, PBL etc appears to add up.

As a framework for content curation, however, I feel the heuristic doesn’t go far enough. In an age in which learners in the workplace are expected to be more autodidactic than ever before, it needs refurbishment to remain relevant.

So I propose the following dimensions of a new-and-improved framework…

Attract me

An important piece of content curated for the target audience is one that attracts them to the curation in the first place, and promotes word-of-mouth marketing among their colleagues.

While related to the subject matter, this content need not be “educational” in the traditional sense. Instead, its role is to be funny, fascinating or otherwise engaging enough to pull the learners in.

Motivate me

As learning in the workplace inevitably informalises, the motivation of employees to drive their own development becomes increasingly pivotal to their performance.

Old-school extrinsic motivators (such as attendance rosters and exams) don’t exist in this space, so the curator needs to convince the audience to proceed. Essentially this means putting the topic into context for them, clarifying how it relates to their role, and explaining why they should bother learning it.

Tell me

This content is new knowledge. I recommend covering only one key concept (or a few at most) to reduce cognitive load. It’s worth remembering that education is not the provision of information; it is sense making.

It’s important for this content to actually teach something. I see far too much curation that waxes lyrical “about” the subject, yet offers nothing practical to be applied on the job. They’re beyond the sales pitch at this stage; give ’em something they can use.

Show me

This content demonstrates the “Tell me” content in action, so the employee can see what the right behaviour looks like, and through that make further sense of the concept.

Real-world scenarios are especially powerful.

Let me

By putting the content into practice, the learner puts his or her understanding to the test.

Interactive exercises and immersive simulations – with feedback – allow the learner to play, fail and succeed in a safe environment.

Support me

This content jumps the knowing-doing gap by helping the learner apply the concepts back on the job.

This is principally achieved via job aids, and perhaps a social forum to facilitate ad hoc Q&A.

Extend me

This content assists the employee who is keen to learn more by raising their awareness of other learning opportunities. These might explore the concepts in more depth, or introduce other concepts more broadly.

All that extra curation that we would have been tempted to shove under “Tell me” can live here instead.

Value me

Everyone is an SME in something, so they have an opportunity to participate in the curation effort. Whether the content they use is self generated or found elsewhere, it is likely to be useful for their colleagues too.

Leverage this opportunity by providing a mechanism by which anyone can contribute better content.

As you have no doubt deduced by now, the overarching theme of my proposed framework is “less is more”. It values quality over quantity.

It may prove useful beyond curation too. For example, it may inform the sequence of an online course. (In such a circumstance, a “Test me” dimension might be inserted after “Let me” to add summative assessment to the formative.)

In any case, it is very much a work in progress. And given it is #wolweek, I ask you… What are your thoughts?