Instructional Design as a practice in corporate vs. academia

Episode #8 of Instructional Design Live on EdTechTalk.

A conversation with Professor Karl Kapp on instructional design – with a focus on the differences in ID as a practice in the academic and corporate worlds. 

(Apparently, it’s Karl Kapp month here on Learning Visions!  See my interview with him last week on his new book.)

These are my live blogged notes – apologize if they’re a bit all over the map.  You can listen to the session recording here.

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Bloomsburg University has a corporate track and an education track for ID.  Different focus in each track.

Corporate – often has requirement of rigorous tracking and requirements

Academia – professor comes knowing what to do. More project based, more team based.

In academia you often know a lot about your audience – ‘they are sophomores at our University’.  Corporate often needs more of that analysis.

People skills are important in both.  Faculty members (academia) are vested in the teaching.

Faculty members don’t often have education in how to teach.  And they often just know one way of teaching – in front of a classroom.  Big paradigm shift for them.

For example -- MIT has put all of content online – which is great.  But still don’t have the added touch of the faculty member.

On corporate side – the SME doesn’t end up being part of the deliverable.  They have content expertise, but usually don’t help deliver the content.

Instructional Differences in corporate vs. academic?

The purpose is often different.  Corporate situation (learning vs. training) vs. academic:

Good faculty members in academic are trying to make learners think differently about subject.  Get people to engage in critical thinking.

In corporate setting – very specific, finite need.  “Get sales reps to sell more)

In educational side – creating aha moments, metacognition moments.

In corporate – addressing specific problems, specific measureable outcomes.  (Ethics training, leadership are different).  But performance is more of the focus.

Similarities in corporate vs. academic:

• Both need goals, objectives
• instructional strategies
• instructional sequence

Corporate -- ‘5 things you need to know about this policy”

Assessment – how are they different in corporate vs. academic?

Ideally in corporate world – does training influence behavior that impacts outcomes? If you’re going to teach me new product functions, you’d ideally be able to tie that to increased sales of that product.  Tie learning objectives to operational/strategic objectives of org.

In academic side, outcomes aren’t usually that clear.  Knowledge acquisition.  Problem solving.  Different things you’re assessing.

In corporate environment – following the ADDIE model is a good way to ensure quality.  A quality process creates a quality product.  ADDIE is a process.

Instructional strategies make learning happen – mnemonics, examples/non-examples, four step method (model, observe, etc.)

When you design instruction on either side – using a process makes sense – but thinking beyond to strategies.  A really good instructor, naturally applies instructional strategies.  IDs need to add those instructional strategies.

On academic side can usually pull what the good professor is using; on the corporate side, we need to add those strategies (might be able to pull those from a good trainer).  On corporate side the ID needs to come up with those strategies because they’re not given to you.

How does a corporate organization assess whether their products are actually achieving what the intent is…that they met the need? 

Need to find out if the instruction is changing behavior.  How do we assess that?  Go back to academia/social sciences --- and build a quasi-scientific study.  You need to do a before and after measure.  What is behavior before and what is behavior after?  Often times we do change of knowledge (pre- and post- test).  But we all have knowledge we should act on.  Need to really measure change in behavior. (This often gets cut though – too expensive, too much time…)

To assess effectiveness of learning:

Tie outcome of training to performance – e.g., if goal is to reduce time of call – can measure that.

In corporate, need to think of training as part of a process and not a one time event.  In academia, you have a whole semester.  Use distributed practice.

It’s easy to do in corporate for the easy stuff – e.g., sales where they already measure everything.  How do you measure leadership behavior?  or safety/compliance.

Corporate has much more focus on self-paced elearning.

Academia can experiment a lot more with different technologies to see if successful. Corporate can’t do that quite as much…As kelly smith said “Higher ed is the test rat for corporate.”

What do you think?  What do you think are the differences in ID between corporate and academic?

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For more on Karl:

• Karl will be participating in the upcoming virtual worlds conference: http://www.vwbpe.org
• Learn more about Karl’s book Learning in 3D.
• Karl’s Blog:  Kapp Notes

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The audio recording for this session will be available at Instruction Design Commons.

About Instructional Design Live:

A weekly online talk show, Instructional Design Live is based around Instructional Design related topics and is opportunity for Instructional Designers and professionals engaged in similar work to discuss effective online teaching and learning practices.

A Conversation with Karl Kapp

A few weeks ago I recorded a 30 minute interview with Professor Karl Kapp.

We talked about virtual worlds, his new book on 3D Learning Environments, and how instructional designers may need to shift their thinking in the coming years.

Go to the Kineo website to download the full interview or listen to the podcast in short clips.

While you’re there, you might also enjoy listening to Steve Lowenthal’s conversation with Anne Laures, retired Director of Learning Services at Walgreens on her experience with eLearning.

Blog Book Tour: Learning in 3D #lrn3d

When Karl Kapp invited me to join the blog book tour for Learning in 3D, he dangled a little carrot in front of me.  Apparently, I make a cameo appearance.  So I am reading this book as a scavenger hunt (leave it to Karl to turn it into a game!)…my narcissistic antennae all aquiver.

For those of you who don’t already know, this book is Karl Kapp’s and Tony O’Driscoll’s homage to the 3D Learning Environment – a glimpse to the future of education and training (“the learning function”) and how it needs to evolve in order to stay relevant.

My Experience in Virtual Worlds

A few years ago, when Second Life was first coming onto the scene as the next big thing, I sat in my office and scratched my head. 

Karl kindly offered to give me a tour – and so there we were – flying around, looking at drills, walking through computer parts.  I remember laughing out loud in my office when I just disappeared at some point by accident. 

I dabbled in SL a bit after that, chronicled my Second Life experiences on my blog, but I haven’t been “in world” in probably two years.    Since then, I have sorely neglected my avatar, Bliss Yue.  This week I downloaded SL onto my current laptop and went and said hi.  I haven’t had much time with her yet, but mean to go spend some quality time and see how SL has evolved since my last visit. 

I get the virtual worlds immersive learning environment thingie.  I see the potential, think it’s where we’re going, but don’t think we’re quite ready for prime time.  Not yet.

What’s Really Going On Out There?

I can’t help but making connections to some of what I heard this week out in Las Vegas at ASTD Tech Knowledge 2010.

Allison Rossett  presented findings from a survey of almost 1,000 people about actual eLearning practices.  One of the bottom 5 eLearning practices that people are doing today?  “Authentic, realistic and immersive, like Second Life”. 

As to future aspirations – what organizations are trying to do: “Authentic & Immersive Experiences” came in #7 on the list.

So immersive learning is indeed something people want to do.  I guess the question is when?

Sadly, I left Las Vegas without getting to meet Karl in person!  He presented this morning at ASTD on Learning in 3D.

It’s Not About Instructional Design…

The book is chock full of background, blueprints and case studies.  I’ve taken pages of notes and clipped many a standout quotes, but especially wanted to share this quote from Randy Hinrichs of 2b3d:

“It’s Not About Instructional Design, It’s About Experiential Design --  Yes, we must gain the learner’s attention, inform them of learning objectives, stimulate recall, present new material, provide learning guidance, elicit performance, provide feedback and correctness, assess performance, and enhance retention and recall. But with today’s carnival of content, mixed media, and unlimited access to new information, we must also create a story for the learner in which he or she is the main character.” (p. 88 - Randy Hinrichs, CEO of 2b3d)

Instructional Strategies:

It’s a practical book, laying lays out eleven “archetypes” that you can use to design virtual world experiences.  Think instructional strategies – e.g., a scavenger hunt can be a great way to teach declarative knowledge and facts or orient new hires to a building layout.

1. Avatar persona
2. Role play
3. Scavenger Hunt
4. Guided Tour
5. Co-creation
6. Small Group Work
7. Group Forum
8. Social Networking
9. Operational application
10. Conceptual orienteering
11. Critical incident

Fun Facts

On page 98, you see a screen shot of Abbot Bundy talking to a “pot plant”.  Alrightie then.  I thought maybe things had gone a little wacky here and we were entering some kind of weed growing simulation, but then I realized it was “potted plants”. :)

I do indeed make a cameo appearance.  Well, Cammy doesn’t make a cameo, but Bliss Yue does.   See if you can find her.  I’ll give you a free subscription to my blog if you do!

Bottom line?  Thumbs up!  Definitely a must read if you want to be a part of the future – if you want to stay relevant as a learning professional.

Get a 20% discount off of the book by using the code L3D1 at the Pfieffer/Wiley web site at http://www.wiley.com/WileyCDA/WileyTitle/productCd-0470504730.html

Check out the book’s website here:  www.learningin3d.info

And thank you, Karl, for inviting me to participate in the blog book tour again.

I'm a Gamer 3.0!

If you've been reading my blog for awhile, you know that I've been really into the whole topics of gamers -- who is, who isn't, and should we even use that term? I had a poll a while back, Are You A Gamer?, that sparked a good conversation.

Now a few of Karl Kapp's students "(Nicole Clark, Heather Gee, Aaron Kennelly and David Robbins) have created a fun little assessment tool called Gamer Rater that helps you determine what level of gamer you are according to Games, Gadgets and Gizmos for Learning. You progress through a series of choices you make throughout a typical day and at the end you are given a summary and a brief description of the type of gamer you are."

I'm so pleased. It turns out I am a Gamer 3.0er. Which means I've lost more than a decade, putting me somewhere in my late 20s.

A couple of issues I had with the game:

• If you're asking friends over, would you invite them to play a board game or a video game? I'd like another option here -- invite friends over for dinner (which is probably take out) and watch the kids run around until they pass out.
• If you want to buy a book at the store and they don't have it, would you have the employee order it or use the kiosk? I would never have bothered going to the store in the first place if I knew just what book I was buying. I would have bought it from Amazon.com.
• If you go to the gym, do you listen to the radio or an mp3 player? My response was "gym, who has time for that?" When I do have the time, I'd rather walk in the woods and listen to the wind.

Anyway, I've got a spring in my step today feeling so young.

How 'bout you. What kind of a gamer are you? Go on, play the game.

College Women on Gamers: They Giggle

I came across this on Wired: Giggling Girls Fail Videogame-Related Quiz, in which college-aged women are asked a series of somewhat spoofy questions on games and gamers. The responses are generally preceded by a giggle and a "what's that?"

According to Wired, this video is from the folks at PurePwnage.com


I find these young womens' clueless responses interesting, especially in light of the rise in gaming culture and the onslaught of Gamers that is about to hit the corporate workplace (and perhaps is, right now, as we speak) -- at least according to Karl Kapp who wrote an entire book on it! (You can read my review of Gadgets, Games & Gizmos for Learning).

Will young women be speaking a different language from their male counterparts? Will they be left out of the Guild Master corporate cult?

Are You A Gamer?

In the spirit of continuing the great conversation that we've been having in the comments on recent review posts (see Women, Gaming & the Guild Master Ceiling and my first review post) of Karl Kapp's Gadgets, Games and Gizmos for Learning -- and in the spirit of experimenting with polling tools (thanks to Soha El-Borno of the Wild Apricot Blog, I thought I'd try a quick, down and dirty poll.

Obviously, this poll won't tell us that much. But perhaps leave a comment to explain your vote.

I used Poll Daddy to create this. It took about 2 seconds.

Women, Gaming & the Guild Master Ceiling

This post is an addendum to my first review of Karl Kapp's book, Gadgets, Games, and Gizmos for Learning.

A basic premise of the book is that gamers are on their way into the workplace and will be changing how we do business. Karl and I have had lively discussions about whether or not girls are gamers. Of course they are. But I would argue not in the same numbers as the boys.

Karl sites statistics that "Seventy percent of the players of the social interaction game The Sims are women under twenty-five," and that the number one game from May 2004-July 2006 was Princess Fashion Boutique.

"Gamer traits are cross-gender traits, because young girls play video games and are growing up in a culture influenced by those games." (p. 25)

Yes, girls play Princess Fashion Boutique in record numbers. And this will change how they think and learn to some degree. Young girls are digital natives. But gamers?

Recently, I conducted a series of interviews with college-aged women. They all had gadgets, relied heavily on their laptops, checked Facebook constantly, and considered themselves "digital natives." But very few of them were/are active game players and, as a rule, did not consider themselves gamers.

I'm concerned that women will be excluded if such a focus is put on gaming skills -- or at least the gamer label. Have you heard the urban legend regarding the big executive who was hired because he was a World of Warcraft Guild Master who had attained some really high level?

The traditional Glass Ceiling will be replaced with a new, but invisible and invincible Guild Master Ceiling.

This past Saturday, there was a Women In Games International (WIGI) Summit at the Austin Convention Center.

In Gamasutra, John Henderson has posted about a summary of a presentation by Dona Bailey. Dona was an early Atari employee (and the only woman at the time) and spoke about women in the gaming industry and provided some specific ideas for getting girls and women more involved in games and gaming.

DebySue Wolfcale, senior brand manager for Sony Online Entertainment (SOE) participated in a panel on Diversity in the Workplace.

As for how to include more women, Wolfcale said her employer, SOE, has realized women players make up a significant part of massively-multiplayer games, the sort they make, and for their sake female game developers are necessary to build the games to attract and keep women playing them.

Furthermore, women are often in roles that hold communities of players together, Wolfcale said, acting as socialite players and leaders of player groups, or guilds. “If we want people to keep playing and paying,” she said, “we have to make sure we're building games that attract women.”

I don't have a conclusion here. I'm just raising some questions.

Gadgets, Games and Gizmos for Learning

Welcome to stop #3 of The Karl Kapp Games, Gadgets, and Gizmos Virtual World Book Tour.

I've grown up with the mentality that it's cheating if I don't read a book from cover to cover. But I have to admit that I used a few cheat codes to read this book. (I just didn't have a lot of time given that I was stop #3 on the tour!)

I suspect the concept of cheats is going to resonate a lot with Boomers and Gen-Xers as a foreign, but thrilling concept. (See Chapter 5: Cheaters Never Win...Or Do They?) It sure did with Tom King over at stop #2 of the book tour....his was just the clever approach I was going to take in beginning this book review. Tom beat me to the punch.

I'm a linear reader in recovery and have been actively learning how to skim books and not feel guilty about it. For this exercise, I was a good doobie, and I read all of Chapter 1, which gives a great background on Boomers, Gamers and the differences between the two.

Then I read the descriptions of each chapter and decided on which ones I would focus. I circled Chapter 6 (moving from creating rigid course structures to small, easily searched nuggets) and Chapter 8 (gamers' expectations of bosses/teachers).

My plan failed me and I just started reading Chapter 2: It's in the Game. (Hey, I can only stray so far from my linear, conforming roots!)

Be sure to read Chapter 2 if you're about to start a new project and need some juice before you start brainstorming. Lots of practical ideas and examples for turning basic teaching points into learning games -- from casual games to teach facts and concepts, to detailed simulations that teach procedures and problem solving. Although I'm not in active instructional design mode for any projects right now, I did jot a bunch of ideas.

Then I started jumping ahead and reading the summary of each chapter. The summaries usually intrigued me enough to go back and read/skim the entire chapter.

Ultimately, I think I actually did read the entire book. Cheat codes and all.

Here's some more thoughts....

Are You a Gamer?

If you were born anytime after 1960, then, technically, you are a gamer.

"A gamer is someone who has grown up in the generation influenced and shaped by video games and technology." (p. 14)

It's not whether or not you played games or still do, it's simply the fact that you were shaped by a popular culture that was shaped by video games.

Karl chunks groups out based on year of birth...roughly a decade at a time. Gamer 1.0s were born between 1960-1970. That's me. But I really don't feel like much of a "gamer." Compared to a Gamer 4.0 (those born between 1991-2000), I'm a bit of an ape (no offense to apes, mind you).

Gamer 1.0ers overlaps with Generation Xers (born between 1965-1979). I was born in 1968. I'm a Gen Xer and a Gamer 1.0er.

Gen Xers are digital immigrants; they did not grow up with the dual technologies of the Internet and video games. But then Karl says this:

"The first generation to be fully immersed in video games and the Internet is the gamer generation." (p. 28)

So, Karl, am I of the gamer generation or am I not?

I feel like I'm floating in this liquid generational gap between the boomers and the gamers...

Workplace Change

"So even if boomers do not leave the workplace en masse, they will most likely be leaving your organization, taking with them a vast amount of knowledge and possibly costing your company dearly if you don't prepare now." (p. 6)

This strikes me as completely foreign. At my current company, I am the OLDEST employee at 39. No boomers here. We're a small company, founded by a couple of Gamers 2.0ers. I'm the Gen Xer who can hardly work a video control to save her life.

Just ask my CTO, who was recently peering over my shoulder as I struggled to figure out how to play a Flash Game. "Wow, you're really not very good at this, are you?"

Cheat Codes & Gaming the System

"But to gamers, cheat codes are not cheating. They are more like help codes." (p. 158)

Bending the rules is fine, if it's not strictly disallowed.

"Successful people learn the unwritten rules of engagement and push those rules, work around those rules, and subvert those rules until they are highly successful." (p. 153)

I agree. And some of them also go on to do illegal and highly unethical or questionable things.

It's a fine line, and Karl makes sure to mention that management must also guide the use of corporate cheats to the ethical benefit of organizations, employees and customers.

Karl recounts a workshop he ran one summer to teach business concepts to middle school kids using the game Railroad Tycoon. The first level objective was to build a park with high customer satisfaction ratings.

One group's satisfaction ratings were through the roof. It turned out they were drowning the unhappy guests, which the game allowed them to do. "It was a little disturbing to me, but to them it was part of the game." (p.157)

Gamers learn to play by the letter of the rules and not the intent. But they're still playing by the rules.

OK. Well, I think "bending the rules" is good. Thinking creatively is good. Working at the edge is good.

But my god. It's bad enough having a boomer in the White House.

Implications for Instructional Design

"Games have a different expectation. They desire instant (or almost instant) learning delivered in an informal manner. They do not want to log into the corporate learning management system, navigate to the desired course, and then page through forty screens to find that one desired piece of information." (p. 165)

Hallelujah! So when can I stop writing these courses? And yet, I'm scared to admit that I don't know if I've got what it takes to do what this generational shift requires. That's way more creativity than I may have in me.

Can someone just write me a page-turner of a course to teach me how to be an instructional designer for the new millenium?

Corporate training departments are set up for the old-school boomer approach to training. Selling a different approach is hard. "We don't have the budget for that." "That's not in our plan." These are actual objections I've heard from clients when I've tried to discuss some alternatives.

And, hey, many e-Learning vendors are vested in the "old boomer" model of training. It's primarily what pays my salary and keeps my company in business. At least this year.

It's a big shift for instructional design. We're no longer talking about designing "courses"; instead we need to talk about helping companies design different strategies (and using games, blogs, wikis, instant messaging -- the gamers' learning tools), about crafting a strategic approach to learning and performance support throughout an organization.

I think we'll need to just send this book along to any prospects before we head out on a sales calls.

Some More Things You Should Know

This book is not just about gadgets, games and gizmos. It's also about using blogs and wikis and other collaborative tools for workplace learning and knowledge sharing.

This book isn't just for learning professionals. Managers, HR, recruiting officers, and consultants working with clients on organizational change initiatives should read it. Karl's provided some great roadmaps for implementing a Knowledge Transfer Process within an organization (see Chapter 11: Getting to the Next Level), with lots of specific examples and practical tips.

The Future

Knowledge Transfer will be an ongoing issue. As the boomers fade away and are completely replaced by a workforce of gamers who change jobs frequently, there will be a constant knowledge drain. It'll be essential that companies have systems in place to capture knowledge as it's being created.

You can read more about Gadgets, Games and Gizmos for Learning at Karl's website. And be sure to buy a copy (or better yet, have your company buy it) for your collection.

GAME OVER

Update: As soon as I published this, I saw a post in my reader from Richard Nantel, CEO at Brandon Hall Research: The Myth of Boomer Retirement. If boomers aren't going to be retiring and leaving the workforce in droves as predicted, then will the knowledge transfer gap be an issue? Do we actually have a lot more time to figure this out?