An energizing retreat – ASTD 2013

I spent most of last week in Dallas, Texas for the annual ASTD International Conference – a HUGE gathering of like-minded folks and an excellent professional retreat. As usual, it was some of the between-session conversations that were the most interesting – time to connect and strategize, to discuss challenges and plan new projects. Allow me to share some of my take-aways.

Keynotes – Being passionate about the work

The keynotes together provided an inspiring arc and solid anchors for a retreat experience. Sir Ken Robinson reminded us that real success comes at the intersection between our passions and our talents. I continue to feel lucky that I live in that space every day. As I work with other professionals in our field I wonder if I can support them in finding the place where they, too, can be more consistently “in their element.”

John Seely Brown reiterated the importance of collaborating with others who share our interests. I loved his enumeration of four dispositions that lead to success: questing, connecting, reflecting, and playing. It’s the playing part I want to work on some more (I can be a little too serious sometimes; I know – hard to believe). I am reminded that some of the best learning experiences don’t even look like learning experiences… they look like states of “flow”; they look like play – like fun.

The message was a clear counterbalance to the way I have been reading the ongoing push to integrate learning into the flow of work. Many of the examples I’ve seen of “learning in the flow of work” seem focused on minimizing time and energy for learning, and I have openly worried that we are giving learning a bit of a short shrift. By contrast, what these folks are advocating is learning that is rich and deeply engaging – but also experimental and playful.  For me, it shifts the meaning of “learning in the flow of work” to being about experience and reflection, not so much about efficiently finding just-in-time, just-enough learning resources.

Liz Wiseman had the unenviable job of wrapping us up when our brains were overfull and our energy depleted – she managed to lift the room with her message of how to multiply the intellectual energy around us. She invited us to “have a good think,” and I certainly had plenty to think about after she described some of the ways smart, energized people can actually deplete others. I’m afraid that I own some of those unintentionally depleting behaviors – being an idea person, being optimistic. Liz didn’t suggest these were all bad, of course – only that they can actually shut down others’ creative energies and hinder their contributions, so we (I!) need to be careful.

Conference themes

Here are some of the topics that rose to the top for me this year along with some resources in case you want to learn more.

Gamification
The current conversation about “gamification” has re-energized our commitment to good old-fashioned engagement with learners – speakers were as often talking about simply incorporating gaming elements as they were about creating actual full-scale learning games. I happened to attend Julie Dirksen’s session and came away with new perspectives and new references. I saw Karl Kopp speak on the topic at the Philadelphia ASTD chapter conference just a few days before I left for Dallas. Between the two of them, you can get a terrific overview of the core ideas.

The messages about feedback were the ones that stuck the most with me; I’m thinking about how I might give more intrinsic feedback even in an academic context. I’m also about to design a consulting course – and I’m considering how I might start with an engaging challenge. For more information, Julie Dirksen posted her slides and additional resources here, and Karl Kopp’s resources can be found here.

Research-based approaches
Because the integration of theory and practice is a platform issue for me, I was interested to see how that played out at the conference. It was marvelous to see how many presenters referenced research evidence for the practices they were advocating, and many of them provided an object lesson in how to reference the background without getting bogged down in it. I applauded their very natural way of stating a research summary in just a sentence or two, and the fact that full references were provided on slide decks and follow up resources.

In between sessions, I had some conversation about what front-line L&D professionals need with regard to scholarly or evidence-based practice. It seems that on the whole, L&D folks want to hear the conclusions of research and the recommendations coming out of research, and they (not unlike our business clients) are less interested in hearing all about the details. They want to trust the source – the people who have already translated research into recommendations for practice, and they do not necessarily want to delve into research for themselves. The good news is that there are a lot more people showing practice recommendations that are based on research findings , so practitioners will find more success finding those evidence-based practices.

Integrating multiple modes of learning
In L&D, we continue to be very interested in encouraging informal and social learning although we are still figuring out how to do that effectively. There were several sessions on how to conceptualize informal learning as part of the whole, and many sessions on social learning.

For me, the most valuable session came from Sam Herring and Sarah Thompson from Intrepid Learning. They introduced a “Five Diamond Model” of learning that I found quite unique and intriguing. The model effectively captures the truism that learning is a process – whether you’re using formal strategies, blended strategies, communities, or knowledge management resources to address learning needs. (You can check out the details from their presentation (found here) and the additional resources on the final slides. You can get an e-book on the Five Diamond Model here.)

The model parallels my own learning environment design framework, although the Five Diamond Model does a better job of capturing the flow of learning around the specific components that might be used as learning assets. I’ll be making deeper comparisons in the next few weeks to see how the Five Diamond Model can support my own work utilizing learning environment design.

Back to work

I enjoy these kinds of gatherings and even as an old hand, I still come away re-energized. Nonetheless, I often wish that there could be more workshop-length sessions embedded in the conference schedule. With sessions only lasting 75-90 minutes, there isn’t time to incorporate the kind of exercises and discussions that would help give participants a deeper understanding of complex topics. We wind up getting a smattering of bullet lists and a high level introduction of frameworks and concepts. There is a lot of presentation without deep activity – and that goes only so far from a learning perspective. I realize it’s up to me to continue to ruminate and explore the topics I found intriguing, and I am glad to have had a long train ride home to begin that process.

ASTD was celebrating 70 years of bringing the field together in a variety of ways. Outside the expo, they showcased a historical timeline, the new competency model, and the communities of practice, among other things. It’s fascinating to see how our field has morphed – and to think about all we have learned and all the positive changes we have made in our practice of learning and development over the years. It’s great to be in such a vibrant and ever-changing field!

Next year, ASTD is in Washington, DC. – May 4-7, 2014. I hope to see you there!

Resources from ASTD 2013

I was thrilled to discuss Learning Environment Design with attendees at the ASTD conference in Dallas earlier today (May 19). Thanks to everyone who attended my session (and hello to everyone who may be checking in because they could not!).  Here are some resources on the topic.

My complete slide deck: Learning Environments by Design for ASTD13

See my Learning Environment Design page for more from previous sessions and blog posts on the subject.

Some example learning environments:

EDUCAUSE – Notice the variety of ways that the resources are tagged. By type of resource, by topic area, etc. Check out the Focus Areas and Initiatives section.

ASTD - ASTD’s site has also been reorganized by communities of practice, and learners accessing the site can get at materials in a variety of ways. The CoP leaders connect us to thought leaders through webinars and invited articles. Some of the communities have discussion boards, like the L&D Yammer group.

Here are all the links I give my students as examples of sites that have curated resources and ways for learners to connect – all have their pros and cons, of course, but these can give you ideas.

Please follow up with me (clombardozzi@L4LP.com) or follow me (here on my blog or @L4LP) to see how this framework continues to develop. Let me hear YOUR stories, questions, and suggestions as well!

BONUS: I also publish a free monthly newsletter, 4 Your Development, which can give you give you a little boost of professional development every month…  articles, links to trending news, ideas to hone your skills, announcements of upcoming events. Subscribe and see a sample here.

A draft learning environment typology

Concrete projects have a way of highlighting the ways our conceptual frameworks work (and don’t work) when applied to real situations. A recent set of course capstone projects got me thinking more deeply about my learning environment design framework – and I’d love to get feedback on some of my (hopefully) improved thinking on the model.

What got me started

As a final project in my graduate course on e-collaboration, students submitted collaborative learning environment proposals – a draft of a portal connecting learners to internet resources and to each other for collaborative learning in relation to a specific need. The project had curation at its core – finding appropriate materials for the identified learning need – but students were also asked to design the site’s overall strategy for continued development, learner interaction, and collaboration. I love seeing how students thought through the assignment and what they produced as a result.

One of the things that struck me about the projects is their differences. Some students reveled in curating tons of resources – blogs, Twitter feeds, text-based and multimedia resources, etc. (And given that many of the projects were L&D related, I’ve gotten lost on the internet more than once as I explored their links.) I was intrigued by their varied visions for discussion forums and their approaches to learner-generated content. I noted that one student added a section of links to training and education resources which was not required but important to her learners. The diversity of proposals got me thinking about learning environment design – about whether there were different types of environments that suggest different approaches.

An emerging typology

If you follow this blog, you have likely seen my framework of components that constitute learning environments. (Click to enlarge.)

The “design” of learning environments requires the designer to make judgments about which components make the most sense for the given need. I got to thinking… are there “types” of learning environments that suggest different arrays of components? Mmm…

Here’s what I’ve come up with so far… I would appreciate any reactions you have. (Click to enlarge.)

In The New Culture of Learning, Doug Thomas and John Seely Brown describe learning environments that are more of the collaboratory type – and I think that is the ideal for rapidly evolving skills and cutting edge knowledge creation. But there is also plenty of room for (dare I say) transmitting knowledge that’s already explicit (the knowledge exchange type) and supporting the development of complex skills over time (the learning resource portal type). I think it might be helpful for designers to understand what they are trying to achieve, because that (of course) will drive the types of components that are most useful.

More to come… please discuss!

You had me until #7

A few days ago, I came across John Hagel’s review and summary of Nicholas Taleb’s Antifragile, and I found many of the ideas intriguing. I agree we live in a world in which unanticipated events often prompt advancements and positive change. We live and work in a constant state of emergence, and getting too comfortable with the status quo is counterproductive in many ways. These ideas resonated with me… until I got to #7, which stopped me in my tracks.

According to Hagel, Taleb has little use for using theory to guide practice – and that’s a cause that is actually near and dear to my heart. Nonetheless, the point deserves pondering.

With regard to linking theory and practice, Taleb holds these views (as summarized by Hagel):

Taleb is eloquent in his contempt for theoreticians and his admiration for practitioners. He believes that a lot of society’s troubles come from the fact that we over-estimate the role of research and analysis and downplay the role of practice and experimentation in driving advances in knowledge and material well-being.

In fact, we reverse the real world flow of knowledge building. Most major historians suggest that theory and research lead to new insights that in turn shape our practices. In fact, he makes the case that most of our significant breakthroughs in knowledge came from experimentation and tinkering by practitioners that then got interpreted and codified by theoreticians. “ . . . we don’t put theories into practice. We create theories out of practice.” This is in part the result of “history written by losers,” the title of one of the chapters in Antifragile.  Taleb asserts that practitioners are too busy doing, so they don’t have the time to write their own story. For Taleb, techne (crafts and know how) trump episteme (book knowledge, know what) every time.

If we want to prosper and cultivate the ability to grow through stress, we need to honor the practitioners and suspect the theoreticians. Practitioners are comfortable with messiness while theoreticians will go to great lengths to try to achieve smoothness and predictability, even if that ultimately results in more stress to the system.

Here’s my window on this issue. I’ve been doing quite a bit of work lately to find ways to encourage us to hold scholarly practice (practice that is evidence-based or grounded in theory and research) as something of a gold standard for practitioners in learning and development. There is so much that we have learned about how to support learning and the strategies that are effective, it seems a shame to not utilize that knowledge as we plan L&D efforts.

I can’t be dismissive of the theory-to-practice loop because it has served me quite well over the years. My habit of looking for research that might inform the projects I work on has saved me from mistakes and has provided useful guidance for my recommendations. I have gained tremendous insight from deep conversations with scholars about their areas of expertise.

At the same time, I was reminded that the loop of practice-to-theory also needs our attention. Whether we recognize it or not, we all have theories about how the world works, and we use our actions to test those theories all the time. Those of us who are well grounded are often figuring out how (and if) the theories and research of our field hold up in practice. What we don’t do well is feed back our findings in ways that benefit others; we don’t often enough share our practice experiences and use them to enrich, expand, caveat, or refute the body of knowledge that we use to underpin our work. Our practice questions and challenges can help shape research questions and theoretical models. But only if we are talking with one another.

A few years ago, Susan Lynham and Kim McDonald described a way of thinking about the relationship between research, theory, and practice that is relevant here. The relationship is depicted as interactive and synergistic, and none of the three sources of knowledge gets precedence. The effectiveness of this model depends on practitioners to be active in the loop – to both draw from theory and research and feed into theory and research.  (Graphic is from There’s noting quite as practical as good theory, a 2011 article by S. Lynham and K. McDonald in Advances in Developing Human Resources 13(2).)

Rather than dismissing theory as useless to practice, the practitioner community should get better at articulating and validating what works so that we can continue to advance our work and ensure our effectiveness. How? We can be generous in sharing our experiences with peers, contributing to practitioner conferences, journals, and online communities. We can engage with academics to partner on research and to simply talk about our experiences and challenges. Reaching out to one another is more likely to lead to improved practice than is operating in our own worlds. And it’s certainly better than holding theoreticians in contempt.

Starting from scratch

Last week, I came across a post by Mark Oehlert that really stayed on my mind. In it, he challenges us to consider what a learning system might look like if we started with a blank slate.

So let’s say you are in an org of a couple hundred people, the org is a couple years old, its grown to the point where you need to get a little bit more structured in terms of systems – not formal from a content perspective but maybe move away from the ad hoc nature of systems that people have been using until now.  What’s your first move?

So much of what we read and hear in our field is about trying to reengineer some of the systems we’ve had in place forever – which is much more onerous than you might think. We’re challenged not only by our own traditional thinking but also by the fact that many business leaders and clients are still stuck in a formal learning paradigm. I started thinking about what I might do in the situation Mark described…

Where to start

Before beginning, I would want to have a solid grasp on what the organization does for a living, and its strategic initiatives and immediate challenges. I need that context as I look at the capabilities that our employees bring to that effort. More than mere background, this understanding of the business is a critical underpinning for evaluating and setting learning strategy.

I am sorely tempted by my traditional upbringing in the field to then start where the organization’s capabilities are falling behind its needs. But if I am to be more true to what I think can really make a difference, I would start with looking at employee strengths and exploring what L&D might do to support deepening those strengths. Unless there is a glaring failure point, it’s more likely that deepening people’s strengths and helping them to apply them to emerging challenges will be among L&D’s most valued contributions. (I recently had a discussion with a researcher about a yet-published study that is showing that many development challenges at the leader level are more about pivoting existing skills toward new challenges than about developing new skills.)

The learning architect approach

As a next step, I would embark on a listening tour to explore the overall health of the organization’s learning environment in a generalized sense - looking for the best of what is already being accessed across all learning resource categories (resources – including performance support, people, training and education, development practices, learning by doing, and motivation). My goal would be to evaluate how L&D might bolster and enrich learning through all these avenues. Even though we imagine that we are “starting from scratch” the truth is that the organization is already learning and it would be arrogant to swoop in and try to tell the organization how and what it should be learning.

The approach would be similar to that of an architect working on a remodel of a house. Seldom does the architect need to knock down the entire house to “start from scratch.” Instead, he or she would tour the property, explore what is working and what isn’t, seek to preserve the best points in the layout and functionality, and design changes that improve the flow and usefulness of the overall floor plan. An architect doesn’t create space according to his or her own preferences and lifestyle, but instead listens carefully to the homeowners to enable their dreams about how they want to live. Often, small changes in the architecture of a home can make dramatic improvements. And it’s the architect’s expertise that makes it possible for him or her to envision what will make that difference. We are architects of learning and should follow a similar pattern, I think.

I agree with Mark that our first line of support should NOT be to create courseware. Freed from the expectation that learning strategy begins with formal curriculum, I would look for ways to leverage what is already available. Mark says, “if you start from a place that says “people are already learning  – I need to help that” – then that is a very different place than “we need to create content and build courses.” The system that suggests …is one that allows discovery, exploration and sharing.”

Jane Hart has suggested that one of the emerging roles for L&D is that of professional learning advisors. I wonder what we could achieve if we set our sights on coaching people on finding resources and leveraging their relationships and their everyday work in support of the learning they need rather than spending so much time and energy trying to package learning for a group of people who are bound to have substantially different needs - both in terms of where their skill gaps are AND in terms of how those skills are going to be immediately applied.

A learning “system”

Maybe the “system” that Mark is looking for is a support system for individualized learning. And that is not just a technological feat. We need to nurture a culture in which all employees have identified their own learning goals and are actively working on achieving them – a culture in which people (managers especially) are tuned to helping one another to learn and grow. A 2011 study by Accenture uncovered characteristics of what they termed “high performance learning,” and those characteristics included self-directing development, soliciting input and feedback, linking learning and performance, actively collaborating, and maintaining a future orientation. Their recommendations underscored the importance of developing a culture that promotes these activities and having a system that connects people and resources across the organization.

The “system” we might create would support self-directed development across all types of learning strategies. Self-directed doesn’t mean independent and isolated, but rather highly motivated and intentional - and social. Self-directed learning is naturally more long term as employees select and implement multiple strategies over time to continuously develop and tune their skills to match the emerging demands of work. Much of the learning would be embedded in work – with quick time-outs to obtain performance support, gather new knowledge, or learn a framework for engaging a skill that can be immediately tried in the work.

Eventually, we may find there are groups of people with similar needs, or roles where standardizing and formalizing some initial training makes sense and is a far more efficient way to launch people on the way to success. But even so, a training course should always be positioned as just one of a long string of learning opportunities that can be accessed to continuously develop necessary knowledge and skills.  In alignment with my understanding that learning takes time, any formalized approach would be designed as a longer term blend between learning activities and application in the flow of work. There are times when stepping outside the flow of work to learn is important and desirable, but that learning needs to be immediately applied and blended into work, with time for reflection and developmental feedback in order for it to stick.

A “from scratch” solution would be quite different from the L&D structures of the past, of course.  We need to emphasize supporting learning in all its forms, and not create a system that thrives only on courseware and formalized programs. Taking a learning environment perspective has consistently widened my point of view and helped me to break out of traditional molds. We need to let go of the idea that all learning should be documented and tracked and rely instead on the outcomes of learning – the resulting deepening capabilities and performance gains – as a measure of L&D success.

In defense of learning

Maybe I am overreacting, but lately it seems to me that “learning” is under attack. It seems to have fallen out of favor, pushed out of the way by performance support and short-form action lists. Learning is pitted as a race against the clock, limited to 18 minute talks, 140 character comments, 6 second videos, and ubiquitous bullet points (no more than seven).

With the demands of current work environments, it’s hard to find time for the deliberate learning that professionals know they need to be successful. They want to get what they need fast, and they want what they access to be short and sweet. There’s no time to delve into research on the topics that are important to their projects – no time to find and read books and articles that might prove helpful. Professionals look for the distilled versions of longer-form work if they look at all – they want the one-page version, the executive summary, or the top 10 tip list.

For many people, attending a lecture series or going to a conference seems out of the question – there’s little time, and little financial support. And even when they do get to go, conference sessions are usually scheduled for an hour or 75 minutes – hardly time to both deliver good content and facilitate exercises or discussion around it. Academic conferences are even more limiting – researchers try to summarize their studies in 15 minutes with just a few more minutes for questions and discussion jammed with several other papers which may or may not be related. There’s little time allocated in lecture halls or conference venues to talk about what participants got out of the experience, to hear what others learned.

In the corporate environment, time allocated for training and education is getting shorter and shorter. Many designers are not allowed to design week-long sessions or a series of programs with intense between-session activities and projects. Over the years, maximum training time has gone from weeks, to days, to hours, to minutes, to seconds. The hype around informal learning and performance support has too often made it seem like all learning happens seamlessly; we don’t need to set aside any time for it.

Professionals tell me they can’t imagine having the time to read blogs or check Twitter streams in order to learn, no less the time or patience to find the thought leaders who are saying interesting and important things in those venues. The social media that is supposed to be a way for great ideas to spread is often seen as another time-sucking burden better left to others who don’t have impossible deadlines to meet.

There’s no time for colleagues to go out to lunch and share their stories. And yet important insights often come from fortuitous discussions over a two-hour lunch – talking about other people’s issues often leads to breakthroughs on your own. Even beyond the lack of lunch breaks, many professionals hardly step away from their desks and their meetings to see what’s happening around them. Rather than risk having hallway conversations, they text or email one another (and those communications better be short and to the point!).

Sigh.

Learning takes time.

In a world where learning is critical, the scarcity of time for learning is a real problem.

Now before I get rebuttals from all those smart and dedicated advocates of just-in-time, just-enough learning and performance support, let me state unequivocally that there is indeed a time and place for short learning bursts. When I’m learning a software product, I don’t want to attend a week-long class. When I need a functionality I don’t know how to use, I’m grateful to be able to pause for a minute to call up a video, look up the directions, or ask a question on a user forum. When my equipment goes on the fritz, I’m grateful for the embedded performance support that walks me through the troubleshooting steps. I don’t need to know these things deeply, and I don’t need to retain them for a long time. It won’t matter if I look them up again the next time I have to perform the task; if I do it often enough, I’ll learn to do it without support eventually. This kind of support is a great advancement for learning.

And I’ll try to get ahead of rebuttals from all the smart and dedicated advocates for social media, too. I love blogging (duh!). I value what I learn from my Twitter feed (which is most often a reference to a longer-form work). I think social media provides access to experts and colleagues that would be near impossible for those of us who work in one-person operations, or who don’t have immediate colleagues who share our specialty or passions about the work. All good stuff!

I’m simply lamenting the lack of time – and to some degree, the lack of respect – for deep, hard-earned, intense, mind-blowing learning.

As learning professionals, we know full well the necessity for deep study, low risk but challenging practice sessions, lively discussion, detailed constructive feedback, and deep reflection for lasting, deep, transformative learning to occur. These things take time.

Can we advocate for dedicated time for learning? Can we stop pretending it can all be done in 10 minute chunks, 1-hour sessions, or quick Q&A on a discussion forum?

The curator’s filters

It’s clear that content curation is increasingly being talked about as an important role for learning professionals (in the context of self-provisioned learning, scaffolding, learing environment design, or creating informal learning space). In my own presentations on the topic, I’ve summarized the curator role as having these responsibilities:

• Seeking material to keep collection fresh
• Filtering material using human judgment to identify what is relevant and valuable
• Categorizing and tagging to make the right material easy to find
• Contextualizing and adding commentary to enrich the impact of the collection
• Highlighting trends and bigger-picture stories to enable sense-making
• Making connections between related (and seemingly unrelated) materials to provide deeper insight
• Generating discussion among people with the same interests to create community and enable knowledge and skill creation.

For this post, I want to focus on the filtering aspect of curation – some important considerations we need to have in play as we evaluate potential resources to add to our curated lists. Harold Rheingold calls this important filtering process “crap detection.”

Information validation. When we are in the role of curator, our expertise is our primary tool for validation potential resources. If we are not experts in what we are curating, a good advisory board or trusted subject matter expert should be recruited to serve that role. Triangulation or saturation are also good practices to put into play here - look to see if multiple sources say similar things, and then pick the best one or two in your opinion (just be careful if they are all citing the same source or only each other as the source).

Currency. Look for dates on the web page; when is the most recent update? If the content cites other articles or books, what is the most recent date on the list of references? If the topic is one that is evolving, then outdated material won’t be your best source.

Source validation. We all know that anyone can put anything up on the internet, but there is something about a professional-looking page with what looks like credible content that sways our inclination to doubt. Depending on your level of concern about validating, there are many strategies that can be used to validate the source of what you are finding. Here are the basics:

About. Check the “about” section for the relevant credentials of the source of the information (and possibly validating that information through other sources). When there isn’t an “about” section, backtracking the URL to the primary web page will give you more indication of the authors. Our sources don’t need to be famous, but it helps to know their backgrounds.

Links.  You can also check whether credible referrers are linking to a site by searching “link: to see who links to that page (and what they say about it). If you have people you follow on Delicious or Diigo, you might also check to see if they are tagging the site, and the comments they make.

Investigate the source. Search the people and organizations referenced on the site, and look for news articles, endorsements, or critiques. For example, I learned from my students this week that Wikipedia is overwhelmingly edited by men – which doesn’t make it wrong, but does make it potentially lacking in certain perspectives. Checking “Who is” to find out who registers the domain name may lead you to discover that a web page is sponsored by a group with a clear agenda.

Diversification of inputs. It is often helpful to ensure you are pulling in a diversity of points of view. If you want to privilege a point of view, that is certainly appropriate in many instances, but I think learners will appreciate that you include (and discuss why you and others disagree with) additional points of view. Otherwise, you look like you are hiding something and learners may lose their trust in you as a curator. As you look to find diverse inputs, it’s helpful to have a healthy skepticism about why certain results rise to the top of your search results list; those placements may be bought (sponsored links) or gamed (search engine optimization strategies).

Filtering is an early step in the curation process, but a critical one. Our learners count on us to cut through the noise and find the most useful materials to support their learning. If they find that we have collated material that is inaccurate, out-dated, or relatively useless, they’ll go back to using their own search methodologies for finding materials, and our attempts to support them will be for naught.