How do you Learn? Really, how?

Thursday, March 26th, 2009 by Rosa Say

Preface: This posting is a follow-up to this one: Do you ask good questions? If you haven’t read it yet, please consider going there first; for the preview will frame this article much better for you.

Alaka‘i managers and leaders are lifelong learners. They have to be. Learning is how… how what? My feeling, and what I have continuously observed over time, especially as someone with a calling for better management, is that learning is how we grow.

Lifelong learning is one of those qualities that can get a lot of lip service. We all understand that we can learn bad habits just as effectively as we can learn good ones, yet learning doesn’t really have any wrong connotations to it. Generally speaking, we all agree that learning is a great thing, and hence we assume that learning is good, and good for us. Our more youthful schooling aside, no one argues any differently; no one rebels.

Still a bunch of lip service. Peer into most classrooms and into the faces of most students (whether in academia or in a workplace training session), and unfortunately you will see that we don’t truly value learning until we realize that
a) We need it, and we need it now, and
b) We aren’t exactly sure how to go about doing it in the way that is most effective for us.

Just because we all do it, it doesn’t mean we do it well. In fact, most of us don’t. (If we did, the argument could be made that we wouldn’t be in this economic mess right now).

Does your learning SERVE you?

Learning truly begins to serve us well only after we personally connect to it in ways we value as exceptionally useful to us. Alas, that doesn’t happen for most of us while we are in school – the very place it was supposed to happen.

It’s when we get to be adults that we begin to realize what things we have to learn for our own well-being, and nine times out of ten, we’re then on our own with figuring them out, and not just the subject matter at hand: We’re on our own with figuring out how we learn best.

This is why I believe that when a business owner incorporates ‘Ike loa [the Hawaiian value of lifelong learning] into his company’s organizational culture, he gives everyone associated with his company an extraordinary gift: He gives them Ho‘ohana context for the learning they now have to do. If that Ho‘ohana is also their calling, it is also learning they want to do. It is learning they thrill to; it is learning that grows them.

Focus on this question of HOW you learn

Do yourself a favor. Whether you have an Alaka‘i manager and leader for a boss or not, figure out for yourself exactly how you learn.

The easiest way to do this is to back-track cause and effect: Trace your learning steps back to the causes which produced your most effective learning result. What did you last learn, which you can honestly say was best-result learning of consequence, because it still serves you well?

You will often hear teachers and coaches quote the NLP buckets [neuro-linguistic programming] asking you if you are largely visual, auditory, tactile or kinesthetic. However we use all those approaches when we learn; it’s biological:
-- Our ears and voice enable us to be auditory and verbal
-- Our eyes enable us to be visual
-- Our sense of touch enables us be tactile
---Our emotions enable us to be kinesthetic
-- And our brains and our spirit help us add an instinctual, gut-level wisdom and intelligence to all four
Thus I find NLP is great when we extend the conversation into how we will communicate our learning (and conversely, our teaching), but for the how of your learning, go deeper into the cause by picking out the details of exactly what it is you do. You want to know how you learn best so you can duplicate those causes, and repeat effective learning as opposed to ineffective learning.

For instance, it wasn’t until after I had graduated from high school and went to college that I figured out I love to study in a certain way. I thrive in quiet, and I had to create study spaces in those pockets of time my roommates weren’t around in my very cramped first apartment, and I figured out how to pick the right spaces when I was out and about elsewhere too. I am a reader, I am a writer, and I study by connecting those two things in visual + tactile patterns. Then, if it is learning I want to last a long time (learning I have decided is a ‘keeper’ for me), I have to attach it to my language of intention, creating a vocabulary for it. (You saw me do so in this posting with the phrase ‘intellectual honesty’). Then I will physically connect my new speech pattern to some kind of work activity; not only does the learning stick because of my speech, it starts to serve me.

When I can articulate my learning process for a boss, I am telling him or her how to work with me when I am growing. They will know when I am truly learning something, or if I merely have a passing interest in it, soon to let it go until it disappears forever.

How we learn is one of our strengths

A big clue is what you are doing when you find you enjoy learning. As author Marcus Buckingham coaches us toward understanding in Go Put your Strengths to Work, our appetites have an innate sort of wisdom which will drive our strongest abilities —“at least those that last [as our true strengths.]” Just as happens with our other strengths, ‘strong learning’ will
1. help us feel effective,
2. we will actively look forward to it,
3. we will feel inquisitive and focused while we do it,
4. and afterwards, we will feel fulfilled and authentic.

And who doesn’t want those things from their learning?

Article courtesy:sayalakai.honadvblogs.com

Do you ask Good Questions?

Thursday, March 19th, 2009 by Rosa Say

Learning to ask good questions is a finely tuned skill that great managers and leaders will master. We started to talk about this a little bit last time... sometimes questions are staged, or otherwise welcomed versus asked outright: Who gives you your Second Opinion?).

Questions are sort of like paintings: There is a vast array of different ones, and though the painting stays the same once the paint has dried and set completely, the painting can look completely different to you depending which frame you put it in —or if you use one at all.

Good questions come from good intention

Once you ask a question, the words which ‘paint’ it are said. But how did you frame them, and why?

For example, I have three favorite questions for managers and leaders I interview in coaching assessments before we embark on Managing with Aloha programs (Frame 1). These are also great as questions for the managers you are thinking about hiring, if you share similar values (Frame 2 – I’ll put the Hawaiian values in parentheses):

1. What’s your calling? (Ho‘ohana as the value of intentional work)
2. How do you learn? (‘Ike loa as the value of lifelong learning)
3. What kind of things will you methodically plan? (‘Imi ola as the value of created destiny)

My purpose for those questions is that I choose my customers; I coach people who I believe are ready to go from good to great. It’s more challenging and fun for me, and it’s more useful and joyous for them. Not only do their values tell me what they believe in, they tell me what they are ready for. Within my coaching programs, the values of Ho‘ohana, ‘Ike loa and ‘Imi ola collectively fortify what I consider to be ‘good to great’ readiness in the Alaka‘i framing of the Managing with Aloha way that great managers work.

Thus Frame 2: I am assuming those are the same kind of people that you hire as Alaka‘i managers, right? If you share the value framing of Alaka‘i, you likely believe, as I do, that

1. Management is a calling, not a title on an org chart.
2. Managers and leaders are lifelong learners; learning is the good food and nutrition necessary for their growth. No growth, no leadership potential.
3. The great managers are diligent planners; they are obsessed with lining up those mission arrows which point to the leadership visions they champion.

I think of good questions are those which have noble purpose: They catch people in what they are doing right, and can further build upon; thus they align with my own intention to coach. Good questions do not have that “what do you think you are doing?” tone to them: They are not those Aha! Caught you doing something wrong! questions which embarrass or demoralize people, and get them to shrink when they struggle to answer.

My job as a coach (and yours as an Alaka‘i boss and mentor) is to help them make their weaknesses irrelevant, and I much prefer to do so by keeping my focus diligently (i.e. intentionally) leveled on their strengths instead.

Choose a frame for your painting

Try it. Choose three values you want your managers to have.
(Here are some Hawaiian value suggestions if you would like to use them: Hau‘oli Makahiki Hou: Hawaiian Values for 2009)

Next, write a belief statement for each of those three values: Why is it important to you that each manager on your team embody those beliefs as well? …If they do, they align with your purpose and thus fortify your organizational culture instead of fragmenting it with a different belief system (which would be a different framing).

Third, turn your belief into a good question of noble purpose: Frame it as a question which quickly tells you if a prospective candidate shares your managerial values or not. If they don’t, they aren’t bad people, they simply are not a fit for your organizational culture, and they need to keep looking for their better match – and you need to keep looking for yours.

Frame 3: Your questions may also work for that long-term manager sitting in their annual performance appraisal with you, if both of you are looking for how past loyalty and comfort can now make the leap to new stretch and a greater leadership challenge.

By the way, if you happen to be looking for a new job right now, you have just identified the three values that you should be looking for in your new boss-to-be. (Frame 4) Remember, there are two decisions to be made in every hiring situation.

Article courtesy:sayalakai.honadvblogs.com

Can kids teach themselves?

A TED video of Sugata Mitra speaking about the 'Hole in the wall' project.

http://tinyurl.com/5m7yfs

Does elearning have a future?

An article by Donald H. Taylor that provides some good insights into e-learning then and now .

In the 1990s elearning was the bright new hope in L&D, promising time- and cost-efficient training, but in reality it promised far more than it could deliver at the time. Ten years on and elearning appears to be casting off its tarnished image and enjoying a resurgence in popularity. Donald H Taylor assesses the lessons learned over the last decade, and asks what next for elearning?

Does elearning have a future? No. And yes. It all depends what you mean by 'elearning'. For many people the term still means centrally-created, text-intensive documents piped down network cables to be read at computers, with learners tracked each step of their tortuous way through the content.

This 'elearning' is based on a set of misconceived notions cooked up about eight years ago. It has little to do with learning, and everything to do with reducing costs by cutting out classrooms. It has no future.

But elearning used in its wider sense to mean technology-supported learning is different. In fact, it is so much part of our daily lives that it has already gone past being 'new technology' and has just become a part of our daily lives. Rather in the same way that we no longer marvel at jet planes or CDs, we have accepted computers as easy gateways to a world of information. If you take 'elearning' to mean 'technology-supported learning', then its future is assured.

The old elearning was born looking backwards
Launched at the end of the 1990s, this elearning was founded on a previous computing boom lasting 10 years, a boom that both put the personal computer on your desk and used client/server architecture to hook it up to your employer's servers and centralised applications.
The result: The late 90s saw a functionality arms race between software vendors that resulted in the birth of the Learning Management System (LMS), first in a client/server environment, and then re-cast to use the internet instead of computer networks to deliver content.

But how did the vendors decide what functionality to include in their first LMS? They asked potential clients. The problem with this approach is that while people know what they want (a solution to their daily problems), they do not always know what they could have.

So this approach missed a trick: the trick of doing things better or even differently. Lessons to be read on paper became documents to be read online. That could have been done better. Reading lots of text online is just plain hard work. Why not use the system to chunk it up and deliver pieces of the content according to need? Instruction for just-in-case learning could be delivered differently to reference for just-in-time help.

Another classic opportunity lost early on was the evaluation form. In the client/server environment, evaluation forms which had been handled on paper became evaluation forms which were filled in online, replicating an existing practice of trying to guess whether training had worked after the event. Instead of this, the power of collecting data widely could have been used differently: to collect pre-course skills gap analysis to provide more informed selection of courses before they took place. Is the newer, technology-supported learning done any better? Usually, but not always. We still use technology to do silly things faster, rather than different things better.

In particular, technology is often used to attempt something it can't do – fix a bad idea. Training on a new IT system weeks before it is deployed is never going to be effective, whether it's done online or in the classroom. Yet both still occur.

And there are some problems that technology alone cannot solve, like understanding
complex requests, or providing sensitive guidance. Sometimes you just need a
person.

A simple example: providing an employee with a large list of possible online courses is not technically difficult, but generally it is only with a thoughtful manager's input that it becomes practically useful.
For all that, the past few years have been a valuable, if sometimes painful, lesson in how to use technology in learning. It is now better understood, and deployed more effectively, than ever before. It is also – importantly – no longer seen as a panacea, but rather understood to be a key part of an overall learning strategy.

This pragmatic understanding of how technology can be used in learning is important for the future for one crucial reason.

Learning is now part of the business
Increasingly, the only way that organisations can differentiate themselves and deliver on their promises is through their people and their skills.

A decade ago nobody cared about skills. They were never on the inside of the newspaper, let alone on the front page. Today it's very different. Skills finally matter, and that means that L&D is suddenly part of a game a lot of people want to play – whether it is operations, HR or elsewhere. And now that the CEO suddenly cares about skills, everyone wants a piece of the action. If L&D is not playing the game right here, it runs the risk of being at best sidelined, and at worst laid off wholesale while another department takes over.

At this point some in L&D may be tempted to reach for technology as a solution, to suggest that only with a particular piece of software can the business understand and develop its skills. Of course it's true that technology will be an essential part of the mix, but while it is required for a solution, it is not sufficient by itself. Other parts of the mix include: L&D staff with the right skills, good networks with helpful peers outside your employer, and links with managers and executives within your organisation.

And here's the twist - these managers and executives have about as much interest in how you get the job done as you have in the plumbing and wiring of a house when you move in. It's essential. You want to know that it works. But you don't want to know how it works.

Encouraged by the dot com frenzy, elearning got a bad name 10 years ago by
promising more than it could ever deliver. Now that skills are back on the
agenda, it is essential not to make the same mistake again.

Instead, conversations with the rest of business should be couched in the language of business – about performance, rather than learning, about readiness rather than knowledge. Anyone who doesn't talk the right language will be seen – and treated – as a technician rather than a strategist. And in the current climate that's risky. L&D needs to be seen as core to the business, not a technical triviality.

The future of technology-supported learning, then, is a paradox. It is a crucial part of the future of organisational development. But if we want to be taken seriously, we shouldn't talk about it too loudly outside the department.

Article courtsey:trainingzone.co.uk

Definition of Social Learning

A question posted by Elliot Masie on the MASIE Center - Learning ThinkTank and Futures was:

What is a good definition of Social Learning?

My answer was learning with and from others.

One can view the discussion at http://www.facebook.com/home.php#/topic.php?uid=49826095913&topic=7215

3 Proven Techniques to Add Creativity to Your E-Learning Courses

An useful article by Tom Kuhlmann for instructional designers.

I like to download the TED videos and watch them when I travel. On my recent flight to Atlanta, I watched IDEO’s Tim Brown talk about the powerful relationship between playing and creative thinking. The essence of his presentation is how to design a better product and user experience.

He discussed three key elements: exploration, thinking with your hands, and role playing. I jotted down some thoughts about how they might relate to those of us who build elearning courses.

Exploration

Building an effective elearning course is more than just applying the mechanics of instructional design. It also involves a creative approach to visual design and how you present the content to the learner. This is as much art as it is science. So it’s important to have fresh ideas and renewed perspective.

As Brown asserts, you can get this with “exploratory play.” He talked about focusing on quantity and not quality of ideas. You don’t want to self-edit. Instead you want to push your creative thinking by generating ideas.

Teams I’ve worked with in the past have done this as a routine. For example, in one session we tried to come up with 50 ways to guide a person through a course. Some were kind of goofy, but we did end up having the foundation for quite a few future courses. At another session, we designed 30 ways for the learner to advance through screens without using an obvious button or instructions to “click here or there.” That was a challenge.

Most of our ideas didn’t make it into production. But that’s OK. The goal was quantity and not quality. Because we ran out of obvious ideas quickly, we really had to stretch our creative thinking to produce more.

Even if you don’t have a team for this type of brainstorming, there are some things you can do on your own. I have a folder on my computer where I collect ideas. When I read something, view a course, or find an interesting graphic style, I save it to the folder. I can go months without every looking at what’s in there. But whenever I need inspiration, I go to the folder and do a scan of what I have. It hasn’t failed me yet.

If you do follow this approach to collect ideas, OneNote and Evernote are two good tools because you can easily do screen and text captures. The captures preserve where you got the idea, and you can add your own notes and tags for quick reference and searching.

Think with Your Hands

Brown talked about “construction play” where you think with your hands. He gave some examples of prototyping. I see this as an extension to the exploratory play above. In exploratory play you generate ideas. And then you transition to making some of them real by thinking with your hands or attempting to actually build something.

A good place to start is by breaking down one of the ideas you’ve collected in your idea folder. It doesn’t need to be anything fancy. It’s just a working model or proof of concept. For example, Brown showed how IDEO prototyped a surgical instrument with a marker, a clip, and an old film canister.

In previous posts, I’ve talked about deconstructing the work of others. I showed you how to design your own templates and how deconstructing courses will help you develop the skills to build better courses. I see deconstruction as part of the “playing with your hands” process. You’re not trying to copy the work of others, but by pulling it apart and building your own versions you end up learning how to do things in a new way. These are techniques you can apply to other projects.

When I play with ideas, I don’t commit a lot of time to the details. I use simple shapes and test them out first. For example, one of my favorite elearning sites is Edheads*. They have some great elearning courses that are very interactive. Similar to the frog dissection demo, I’ve been playing with ways that I’d replicate some of the functionality of the virtual knee surgery course in PowerPoint without using Flash.

Click here to view the knee range of motion prototype.

As you can see, the prototype is nothing fancy. The main point is to play around with an idea and make it something tangible. You’ll learn new techniques which will help you be more creative and produce your courses faster.

The virtual knee prototype above only took a few minutes to build. If a customer wanted an example of a rapid elearning course with some interactivity, I could create a prototype like this on-the-fly because I’ve made it a habit of building them as part of my professional development.

Role Play

For me, one of the most striking parts of Brown’s presentation w as when he showed the image from the emergency room video. It was shot from the perspective of a patient. When they reviewed the video, all they saw was 30 minutes of the acoustic tiles on the ceiling. Immediately, I could empathize with the patient’s perspective. And I could already think of ways to improve the service. If I were trying to design a better experience for the patient, this type of role play would really help.

So, how does this apply to elearning? Glad you asked. Ultimately, you want to design a product that serves the learner.

When you sit down and look at the courses you build, are they ones that you’d enjoy going through?

When I was at the conference in Atlanta, someone asked me for some ideas on how to get her instructional designers and subject matter experts on the same page. She was struggling with how to get her subject matter experts to frame their expertise in a way that was relevant to learners. And then have her instructional designers understand how to build the right type of learning experience.

I referenced the role play ideas from Brown’s video that I had watched on the flight over. We talked about the need for the designers and subject matter experts to see the course from the perspective of the learner and not the information.

The goal is to design an experience for the learner. And in doing so, make the subject matter relevant. Perhaps there was some sort of role play exercise that could put the subject matter expert and instructional designers in the position of the new learner. Here are some ideas.

• Become a new learner. Sign up for an elearning course and then see what works for you and what doesn’t. There are always things to learn about navigation, the user interface, and interactions that engage you. Take what you learn and apply it to your own elearning course.
• Meet with recent learners and get their perspectives on how to structure the content. Ideally, you’d bring a recent learner into the process as part of your normal development cycle. They’ll help you keep the course real. If not, at least try to get their perspective at the beginning of the design process.
• You could quickly prototype a course and then watch a learner go through it. Find someone who has no vested interest in the course. Watch how they interact with the content. You might be surprised at what they do. You might also be surprised at what they feel about the content.
• For each piece of information you present, apply an expected action. “If the learner knew this information, what would it look like if I saw it?” Build your course around those expectations.

Role playing is about designing the best user experience. The key in all of this is to put yourself in the position of the new learner. And by doing this, you’ll make a course that is relevant and successful.
As you watch the video, you’ll probably get different insights. These are three that came to mind and ones that I think can be applied in a practical way.

Article courtesy:articulate.com/rapid-elearning

A video: An interview with Jay Cross

http://tinyurl.com/bl7b4c

Article courtesy:trainingzone.co.uk