Opening Session with David Kelly #DevLearn

These are my live blogged notes from the opening session at this year's DevLearn, hosted by the eLearning Guild and happening in Las Vegas. Forgive any typos and incoherencies.

David Kelly from the Guild is setting the stage for a great week of learning. The theme this year is "Innovation in the Making."

Making innovation happen. It's about dots -- something as simple as a dot. 

Most of us see the dots that we know – and those are the dots that make up our own personal status quos.

Those who innovate, see beyond the dots that make up the status quo. Always be connecting dots.

So go forth to DevLearn and connect some dots. See the dots that you don't normally see. 

The unknown dots are disruptions. If we want to see how technology is changing the way people learn, we need to look at how technology is changing the way we LIVE.

Kineo Team at #DevLearn

The annual migration of the L&D tech crowd to Las Vegas for the eLearning Guild’s fabulous DevLearn conference has begun. In fact, I’m writing and posting this update from somewhere high above the country thanks to free inflight WiFi!

The Kineo US team will be there, eager to learn and connect with the expected crowd of over 2,800 of our industry cohorts.

So what’s on tap for us this week, aside from attending great keynotes, great sessions, those in-hall conversations where the learning really happens, plus the prowling of the Expo hall to see what’s new? Let's take a look at some of what we'll be up to.

WEDNESDAY

The Accidental Instructional Designer 3:00-4:00

 Join me and have a chance to win a copy of my book, The Accidental Instructional Designer!

Chances are you didn’t dream of becoming of an eLearning designer when you grew up, did you? Most of the instructional designers in the eLearning business arrived here by accident. So now that you’re here and doing this work, how can you become a more intentional practitioner?

In this session we'll talk about four key areas you can focus on in order to become a more well-rounded eLearning designer. You will also discover the ways that you can take your practice to the next level by clearly identifying and honing your instructional designer sweet spot. Finally, this session will provide you with some quick tips for better eLearning design that you can immediately apply to your current and upcoming projects.

THURSDAY 

Morning Buzz IDS: Moving from Accidental to Intentional 7:30-8:15

Grab your coffee and join me for an informal conversation about instructional design and building a career out of what may have been a surprising accident. The conversation will likely build off the ideas in my Wednesday session, but attending that session is definitely not a requirement.

Reignited! Meme-ing the Innovative World of eLearning 3:00-4:00

If it’s anything like last year’s session, there will be lots of laughing out loud. Don’t miss the fun!

Technology has completely changed the way we live, work, and learn. Technology has brought us the Internet, smartphones, tablets, and many more tools that have changed our lives forever. Of course, these same technologies have also brought us memes like Socially Awkward Penguin, Success Kid, and yes, Grumpy Cat.

For the second year in a row, these two worlds collide as four industry experts use today’s memes to explore the innovative world of learning. The rules of each presentation are simple: Each speaker’s presentation has 20 slides that automatically advance every 20 seconds. That provides each speaker with six minutes and 40 seconds to share their vision for how learning is being innovated. And there’s one last rule—slides can only use common Internet memes for visuals.

Demofest 4:00-6:00

We’ll be showing off some of our latest work at DemoFest. And just what is DemoFest? It’s a packed room of more than 80 project teams showing off their work and an exhilarating few hours of getting ideas and inspiration from companies and teams from all over the world. We’ll be showing off a great project with a focus on Totara and Adapt, both open source tools.

How does a fast food chain take new managers on a journey from day one to proficiency? How do you provide a structured framework when so much of the learning happens shoulder-to-shoulder on the restaurant floor? Come take a peek at what we’re calling “proficiency journeys.” You’ll see a customized version of Totara, the open source LMS, in action alongside eLearning objects created using the open source Adapt framework. It’s a multi-device, responsive platform complete with checklists and observation forms, eLearning objects, one-on-one mentoring, and assessment of actual on the job performance. Now put that in your milkshake and give it a blend!

If you’re at DevLearn this year, I hope it’s fabulous for you. And if you’re enjoying the backchannel from the comfort of home, be sure to follow my blog where I’ll be posting session notes and other tidbits.

Webinar: 10 Tips for Better eLearning Design on Sept 3

Join me on September 3rd, 1:00 eastern for a webinar with Training Magazine Network.

Here's the description:

Has your eLearning design gotten dull and same-old, same-old? Looking for some design ideas and inspiration?  Cammy Bean, Kineo's VP of Learning Design, shares some ideas and examples to get your design juices flowing. 

In this session, you'll learn to:

• Liven up your eLearning designs with strategies for making your content more human

• Design interactions that rely less on clicking and more on thinking

• Identify ways to extend the learning experience outside of the course and into the real world

For more info and to register head on over to the Training Magazine Network. 

See you online!

How I Blog: #DevLearn Bloggers

DevLearn, that mecca of a eLearning conference, is coming up quickly! This year, we'll be running around the MGM Grand in Las Vegas from September 30-October 2, filling our heads with eLearning goodness. 

I'm honored to be a part of the #DevLearn Bloggers team. Each of us has been asked to write a post about how we blog...here's my offering:

I’ve always been a note taker. At college, I filled notebook upon notebook with my somewhat illegible handwritten text. (This was in the days before laptops, so yes, I am dating myself.) The act of note taking kept me focused on the lecture or conversation, helped me connect dots, and augmented the faulty memory of my brain. When I wrote papers in the wee hours of the night or studied for finals, those notes were critical reference tools for me...

Read the full story over at Twist, the eLearning Guild's blog.

Moving Beyond Event-based Learning—a Managed Journey to Demonstrated Proficiency [Article]

Chip Cleary and I just published and article in Learning Solutions Magazine, Moving Beyond Event-based Learning—a Managed Journey to Demonstrated Proficiency.

We’re going to open with a bold and brash statement—eLearning has really dumbed down the training world. 

We know that’s blasphemy from two people who have both been immersed in the eLearning world for over 20 years.

Ooh -- them's fightin' words. So where should we be going? Read on for more....

Becoming a Better eLearning Designer: 4 Areas to Focus On #ATD2015

Yesterday, I had the honor of being interviewed for ATD TV as part of the International Conference & Expo that just wrapped up in Orlando this week.  Here I talk about the four pieces of eLearning pie you should eat if you want to be a well-rounded eLearning professional. These ideas all originated from conversations I've had over the years with my friend and mentor, Dr. Ellen Wagner of Sage Road Solutions.

Six Psychological Tricks to Increase Recall #ATD2015 @MindGym

These are my liveblogged notes from a concurrent session at ATD 2015, happening this week in Orlando, Florida. Forgive any typos or incoherencies.

Sebastian Bailey from Mind Gym "Six Psychological Tricks to Increase Recall"

1. How do you increase the quit rate of smokers? (let's take a look at habit change).

When you look at all literature on habit change you see these stages:

• Persisting "I enjoy smoking"
• Contemplating "Maybe I should give up."
• Preparing "I'm definitely going to quite..."
• Acting "I've quite. It's hard but i've quit."
• Maintaining "I've not smoked for six months."

Positive deviance. Go look at the behaviors of people who have quit -- who are solving the problems?

At the persisting stage -- we perceive the cons of quitting smoking to be too many, while the pros of quitting are fewer. The shift to increase the pros we consider for quitting, we have to change the mindset at the persisting/contemplating stage.

At the persisting stage, the cons outweigh the pros. A key shift happens at the stage where people are contemplating. At the Maintain stage the pros outweigh the cons.

So how do you help? It's how you raise awareness. If we get engagement right, sustain will help.

How to apply this trick:

• Think habit changes as much as learning and recognize the stages of change
• Don't rush people from Persisting to Acting and expect much change
• Encouraging belief in the value of change is key

2. People need to feel compelled to get involved.  

How can we harness positive stress? If we are too aroused, our performance drops; if we're not aroused at all; our performance suffers...(yeah, I know -- we laughed in the session. This is from a model developed in the early 1900s.)

When we send anxiety provoking messages, people's intentions goes up -- they think they will go get the shots that are recommended. But fear alone creates too much stress and people don't actually go to the get those shots. But when you build some fear AND give a map to the clinic, more people go and get their shots.

How to apply this trick:

• Schedule learning just before or after a challenging experience - what are you doing so your learners are entering the experience with some sense of anxiety...why they should care?
• Sell the need
• Make the call to action really explicit

3. What are we more likely to recall?

STORIES. Chip and Dan Heath study.  Stats vs. stories. Stories aid recall. We make emotional connections, more memorable. But do they help us change behavior?

Save the Children did a study. Shared presentation of stats and charts, shared a personal story of a child who had a difficult life. Then they asked them, "Will you make a donation?" Which condition inspired more donations? Stats people gave on average $1.43 vs. for stories $2.38...Stories do have an impact on behavior.

Why rhyme is sublime.

How hard you're making me think has an effect on how much I believe what you're sharing....

How to apply this trick:

• Don't just tell, use stories that sell
• Stats and number will cause slumber
• while rhymes will inspire devotion...

4. Where and when matters.

If you set a goal for yourself "I'll go update my resume" -- 20%of study participants who committed to update their resume did so.

The second group set a different goal -- from a goal to an implementation intention: "I will update my resume on Wednesday at 10:00" -- 80% of study participants followed through.

So how do you structure an implementation intention?

If-then statements are more effective: "I'll do as many math problems as I can on Wednesday at 9:00" is not as effective as ''If it's wednesday at 9 am, I will do as many math puzzles as possible." There's less deviation when we use if-then statements..

Don't make me think too hard. The if-then statement creates a situational cue. So you have to think less.

Social support creates accountability.

How to apply this trick:

• Use implementation intentions to drive transfer
• Get people to write it down
• Get people to tell others about their commitment

5. How do you get drivers to notice bicyclists?

It's easy to miss something you're not paying attention to.  People only see what they look out for. Situational attention.

We need to be prompted and supported to look for the moments when we should apply learning.

How to apply this trick:

• Use cues and prompts in the real world to focus attention
• Set specific missions built into the workflow
• Develop the participants mindfulness as part of the experience

6. What makes a psychology professor behave like a soccer hooligan?

Why do we behave out of character? 

Primed behavior experiment

Ask trivial pursuit question -- 

No prime

Prime someone to be a professor -- ask them "If you were a professor how would you solve problems? (see a 15% increase in how well people do on the game)

Prime them to be an assistant (see a 2% increase in how well people do over non-primed)

Adopting the right mindset can have a huge difference in our performance.

The way in which we get primed lets us hear something differently.

How to apply this trick:

• Use priming to increase the participants view of themselves as great learners
• Develop tools to support participants in their problem solving
• Prompt participants to adopt the right thinking frame for the problem at hand.

Recap:

1. Build belief in the early stages of change
2. Create emotional arousal
3. Use stories over facts/stats
4. Use written, shared, implementation intentions
5. Set specific missions built into the workflow
6. Prime the right mindset by providing tools

A methodology:

• Engagement campaign
• Some type of diagnostic (where you are now - this helps people see value)
• Create a toolkit and scaffolding to create the right mindset.
• Create 90 minute workouts  -- the power of social settings
• Pledge -- this is a specific conversation about WHY transfer is hard. What are you going to do to beat all of your habits?
• Mission
• Distributed practice -- distribute your learning
• Boosters
• Toolkit