Day 1 Reflections – DevLearn 2015

Image from Morguefile

Ideas for designing next learning experience:

Years ago I had a simple idea: happy learners are those who get what they need to feel accomplished in their tasks.  Depending on your field or business, successful learners are accomplishments and milestones or happy and loyal customers.

So many training efforts focus on wowing learners during the training. 24 hours later, you can ask those same learners what  they learned and they will have forgotten most of it. According to Kohn apparently 70% of all training is forgotten after a day. What does this mean for your strategy for creating happy learners/customers?

You need to focus on what is done after the training.

According to Art Kohn’s presentation, this can be accomplished by meeting the needs of the 3 part recommendation of activity that focuses on what happens after the training  (see the image below). One example Kohn highlights as part of their business solution is providing learning boosts to training participants which are brief questions, quizzes or polls around the content. Another example includes using social reinforcement in the form of competitive games with learners (badge earning, accomplishment lists).

If you don’t “use it (within 24 hours), you lose it.” Therefore, it’s in our best interests to get our learner/customers to commit to applying what they’ve learned and give them incentive to do so. This incentive or reward could possibly take different forms according to the audience’s needs/desires:

• a gift or tchothcke if they share their story/testimonial of putting what they’ve learned into practice within 2 days
• the opportunity to win a larger substantial prize if they can provide proof that they’ve applied the knowledge/skill post-training
• simply the opportunity to receive recognition for their accomplishment
• competing with their peers to earn achievement badges for what they’ve applied at work
• a warning that inability to put the training in action afterwards may put their work, business, standing, safety, or customers at risk
• even more examples…

Click the image for a larger view

Cammy Bean pointed out designers of learning experiences should avoid overusing the clickity clackity and bling, bling where it’s NOT necessary.  Bad Computer Based Training (CBT) is usually pretty flat and is mainly a content dump.  Instead it should address the following questions the right way.

How does it make you feel? –> Does it appeal to or touch upon the appropriate emotions to get your attention?

How does it look? –> Is it aesthetically pleasing and easy to read?

Do you know what to do with it? –> Can the learners just pick it up and learn without 5 pages of orientation and instruction? Is it intuitive?

I would add the following question because, as Cammy pointed out, so many people are still resorting to creating page turners (or even content dumps in the form of webinars, which seem to be the bandaid training in many corporate and business environments).

Are you just resorting to dumping content? –> Have you created a simple page turner? Or are you engaging your learners and providing opportunities for them to reinforce their learning?

I think going forward I’m going to use these questions very similarly to the questions I use in the empathy map I explained in a previous blog post. They can act as reflective and evaluative questions of my own training strategy and design to insure that my learners are the winners.

An interesting factoid I learned:

The average age of a user on Twitter is 35 and their income is $75K.

A while ago I also read somewhere that Twitter users are the introverts of the net while Facebookers are the extroverts. Honestly, that sounds about as real as a “Which Game of Thrones Character Are You?” quiz.  I don’t use facebook, but as a skeptical introvert, even I take what I’m saying with a grain of salt. Here is an interesting post from Fast Company that argues that introverts make the best networkers on Twitter.

And about using badges…

I like the idea, but as I discussed in my Twitter conversation with @pascalliberte on badges, as a somewhat competitive learner. I like the idea of tracking my progress in learning with milestones and badges. I also might make an effort to be the first to finish tasks. However, I can empathize with those who might feel like badges are as patronizing as using stars and stickers to motivate adults to learn. The use of badges and leaderboards must be done appropriately for the learner audience.

Images from the Morguefile:
http://www.morguefile.com/archive/display/95045
http://www.morguefile.com/archive/display/864730

My top tools for learning & design

I tend to explore tools and software selectively, but after I’ve discovered their uses, I like to work the heck out of them.  Christy Tucker inspired me to write a post on my favorite tools for learning and instructional design. The only ones that are new to my repertoire from over five years ago are Twitter & Storyline.

To enrich my own learning

Twitter – through hashtags & twitterchats I still am able to remain connected to new or trending conversations in my field. I also get to explore and hear other’s voices on topics I care about or am interested in. Yes, sometimes it seems that the chats provide a meeting ground for those who want to collect followers, but they do allow me to connect with others on Twitter who have similar interests.  While engaging in a few MOOCs I found the Twitter backchat most helpful in getting help or being directed to help during the class. The backchat also provided a great channel for starting conversation about topics.

I began using Twitter five years ago and I still seem to be engaged with it.  I have wondered what my choice in primary social media says about me, and apparently according to this article: “long-time Twitter users are found to use the site for cognitive simulation by uncovering information w/o much socialization.”  Considering my introversion this makes sense. Though to be frank, I have been attracted to the character restriction on Twitter because it forces you to be concise and pointed in your use of language. I imagine masters of literary wit from the past loving Twitter. How would Mark Twain or Dorothy Parker used it to hone their sharp observances or comebacks?

What would Dorothy tweet?

Diigo

I still use Diigo to curate and organize resources I find on the Internet, especially when I’m trying to make a case for something I’ve tried using it to share resources with others, but I really only have one or two peers who gets the use of this tool, so I haven’t used it collaboratively.

LinkedIn

I’ve started using linked in more, to learn about what my professional peers and connections are interested in and sharing. I have used the discussion and participated in groups in the past, but not as much today.

For Design/Creativity

Articulate Storyline is my primary tool for developing online courses. The software itself allows me to easily create paths and experiences for learning content. It allows Instructional Designers like myself to focus more on design and delivery rather than programming functionality. Thankfully there’s a highly active learning community out there supported by Articulate and its users.

PowerPoint, like my former colleague, Christy Tucker, I use it for storyboarding course content. To some extent I’ve used it to create simple designs for online course backgrounds. I’m not a graphic designer by trade, but I appreciate the ability to create simple yet somewhat aesthetically pleasing backgrounds and containers for my content without a lot of fuss. No it’s not perfect by design standards, but it will do in a pinch and I can easily import into Storyline.

Sample of course page designed in PowerPoint

For Creativity Outside of Work

SlideShare – Slideshare allows me to port and share my presentations to the public and also apply audio to them. I also use the entire site as a resource for design inspiration in creating and developing presentation and course content visuals. And While Prezi seemed at first to have a slicker design & delivery, I eventually got tired of using it because the constant zooming left me a little motion sick. I never bothered to figure out a way around it.