Sunday morning I head to sunny Orlando for Learning Solutions 2013 (which makes me SOOOO happy considering how much snow is falling outside my window at the moment).
I'll be part of the pre-conference activities, delivering a full day workshop on Monday, "The Accidental Instructional Designer." There may still be time to sign up if you're fast!
Sadly, I'll not be staying for the actual conference this year as I've got other commitments. I'll be heading home Tuesday morning, but keeping a keen eye to #lscon on Twitter throughout the week.
Look for me by the pool Sunday afternoon!
Friday, March 08, 2013
Thursday, March 07, 2013
"Is Your Compliance Training Ready for a Makeover?" @kineo webinar recording now available!
If you missed our Kineo webinar from a few weeks back (Is Your Compliance Training Ready for a Makeover), the recording is now up for your viewing pleasure:
Enjoy!
Enjoy!
Tuesday, February 19, 2013
The Power of Habit (it's what I'm reading)
To run or eat a donut? To go to bed early or sit up watching hours of Netflix? To do a process correctly and follow the steps or to go all rogue and do what you feel like?
How do habits form and how do we change them? How do we learn new habits? How do we replace bad habits?
My late night habit this week is reading The Power of Habit: Why We Do What We Do in Life and Business by Charles Duhigg.
It's an accessible and riveting read, full of smarty pants research and technical discussion about things like the basal ganglia.
Highly recommend you form the same habit!
How do habits form and how do we change them? How do we learn new habits? How do we replace bad habits?
My late night habit this week is reading The Power of Habit: Why We Do What We Do in Life and Business by Charles Duhigg.It's an accessible and riveting read, full of smarty pants research and technical discussion about things like the basal ganglia.
Highly recommend you form the same habit!
Thursday, February 07, 2013
Compliance Training need a makeover? Join us for a free webinar!
Is your training connecting with employees? Is your content relevant and engaging? Are you successfully having the impact you desire?
Or could your training benefit from a dose of inspiration? If so, you aren’t alone.
Or could your training benefit from a dose of inspiration? If so, you aren’t alone.
According to LRN’s 2011-12 Ethics & Compliance Leadership Survey Report, 59% of respondents identify “Online Education Fatigue” as their top challenge.
Let's take a look at best practices in compliance training from organizations across the globe including examples of how to:
1. Make it fun
2. Show consequences
3. Tell stories
4. Make it personal
5. Make the learner’s role clear
6. Focus on grey areas that require judgment
7. Include clear calls to action
8. Link to policies don’t replicate them
9. Keep it simple
10. Make it memorable
Join me today for a free Kineo webinar at 12:30 eastern!
Friday, February 01, 2013
Using Game Design To Create Accomplishment Based Learning, Julie Dirksen #astdtk13 @usablelearning
These are my liveblogged notes from a concurrent session with Julie Dirksen. I'm at the ASTD Tech Knowledge 2013 Conference in San Jose, California. Apologies for typos and incoherence.
In ID school, we learned about the A and the D-esign part is mostly -- then all this cool stuff happens in this black box.
There's a lot of cool stuff from game design that we can apply.
It's not about making a multiple choice test look "gamey".
We can make stuff look like games, but it doesn't have the fundamental elements that make games engaging.
Gamification has gotten conflated with the idea of extrinsic rewards: badges, points, etc. The scooby snacks approach to tricking people into it.
More on extrinsic rewards on Julie's blog.
How do we make the most boring topics interesting?
Raph Koster -- "in games learning is the drug" in A Theory of Fun. It's learning, but it doesn't feel effortful.
Let's start with attention
How long is the avg attention span? We hear that it's 7-10 minutes. But there's really not a practical limit to our attention span if we WANT to pay attention. Think a 13 hour Lord of the Rings Movie Marathon.
What about elephants? Jonathan Haidt, The Happiness Hypothesis
You have a rider -- the conscious, verbal thinking brain -- and the elephant -- the automatic, emotional, visceral brain.
Your rider says things and your elephant feels stuff. We think the rider is in charge. but the elephant is much bigger...and sometimes they compete. The elephant wants to eat the french fries and take a nap now....
When there's a conflict -- it's very easy to distract the elephant. We are creates of urgency. The elephant has a hard time waiting. Your elephant is really concerned with what is happening RIGHT NOW.
"I know, but..." activities -- I know I shouldn't smoke, but... I know I should exercise, but....
So for our learners -- I need you to pay attention now, but when are you actually going to need this? It's not going to feel urgent or important until they get to that point.
so how do we get them to "I'm really glad I know this right now."
Hyperbolic discounting -- behavioral economics. (I'll give you ten dollars today or eleven dollars tomorrow? Ten dollars today or eleven dollars in a year? Ten today or 1,000 in a year?) If it's really important and I know I'm going to need it I can wait.
Cake vs. Fruit Salad research study: Shiv and Fedorikhin 1999 (Stanford)
- Higher cognitive load in one group vs. the other who had easy math tasks.
- Then they asked each group if they wanted cake vs. fruit salad.
- When we ask people to concentrate and use cognitive resources, it has an impact on will power. The people with the harder tasks took the cake 2:1. We've depleted their willpower.
- We think it has to do with brain glucose. (Willpower by Baumeister)
The rider has to drag the elephant behind.
So if our learners are forcing themselves to pay attention we are lucky if we get 7-10 minutes.
Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience -- what does it look like when people are really engaged? When you're in flow state, you work on something for three hours without noticing.
It has to do with challenge vs. your skill level. When things are too hard, it's hard and you might stop. (e.g., a game that's too hard). If your ability exceeds the skill level you might get bored.
The flow channel is in the middle -- keeping people on the edge of the flow channel. How do we keep people engaged? It looks like an upward sloping wavy line.
When you play a game, the first levels are easy. Then it gets harder and you get more challenged.
When you use a regular pattern you already know, it's the cognitive equivalent of coasting.
Your brain on Tetris. Study showing glucose levels in brain when first learning Tetris vs. after a few weeks of practice. Much less glucose used -- you're good at it now. It becomes automatic.
Putting people back into the beginner state can make them grumpy. It's hard.
Learning activities are often just straight uphill climbs. Here's some info, here's some more, some more, more...
What games do well is give you a period of biking up hill, with a downhill slope, then another uphill climb -- so the slope goes up not just in a steady climb but in a bumpy road.
Structure a flow of goals - smaller goals that lead up to larger goals. Ultimately you get to the boss fight.
Even a jigsaw puzzle has structure goals -- you find the corners and build the borders....
Monopoly -- first you buy property, then get a monopoly, then buy houses, then hotels...
Game designers think about this a lot. Plants vs. Zombies is a great example of flow. (She mentions a good slide share that talks about how they created that game).
Purpose is a big part of this.
Why am I doing this?
How do you take something that you won't need for six months so it feels important enough that you should learn it now?
Instead of WIIFM (what's in it for me?), how about WCIDWT (what could I do what that?)
Teaching remedial math in the context of creating a new coffee shop. Instead of just teaching math skills, give it a purpose that will connect with your audience (what do they want to do with that math?)
Instead of a photoshop on working with layers, why not "how to create swanky blog headers?"
How do we give people the feeling that they're accomplishing something?
Restaurant Management course. Instead of doing modules on Food Safety and Management....how can you make this more interesting?
Scenarios -- can you level up your scenarios? Start with easy scenarios and get them harder...
First module could be a slow lunch shift and you're dealing with an employee who is late and a customer complaint. Doing all the skills at a really easy level.
Then move out a week, a month, a year...have customer service as a topic spread throughout all the scenarios. So you're touching the topics more than once (as in a traditional elearning mod).
How can we make you need this right now? How can you create structured goals or a series of quest? What are the immediate goal? short-term goals? mid-term goals? The long-term goals?
Thursday, January 31, 2013
Brain and Memory with Arthur Kohn #astdtk13
These are my liveblogged notes from a concurrent session with Arthur Kohn. I'm at the ASTD Tech Knowledge 2013 Conference kicking off today January 29, 2013 in San Jose, California. Apologies for typos and incoherence.
Brain and Memory: Seven Tips that Improve E-Learning
Arthur Kohn, PhD
Fulbright Professor of Cognitive Science
He starts us off with a memory test. He gives us 15 words in turn and then after he's said them all, we write them down in any order:
(I remembered 12 out of 15 of them!)
Primacy effect: the word that come first we remembered the most - it was the most rehearsed.
The word cotton -- most recently said was also remembered. The words in the middle were not as well remembered...
We are organic machines.
You would think you encode a word. But what you encode in your brain is a representation of that word or connotations you have with that word. (e.g., if you heard the word switch, you have may have remembered the word light as a connotation of switch).
There is no difference, biochemically, between a true memory and an implanted memory. It is incredibly easy to implant memories in people's minds.
The constructed nature of memory.
1. Memory is Constructive. Our brains often invent our memories in creative ways.
---------
Take control over the content that you want your students to learn. Here are 40 facts you need to remember. As a teacher, that's your fault when the student doesn't remember, not the student's.
Skinner: "if the pidgeon fails to behave like I think they will, the pidgeon is right and I'm wrong."
How do we educate uneducated,
Create context around random letters (he shows us FB INB AAN DIB MHI PPAO SHA and asks us to remember that. Much easier to remember if you see it as FBI NBA AND IBM HIPPA OSHA).
"Chunking" - we can hold 7 independent facts, plus or minus two. But if I can enrich that content by combining things we can remember a lot more! The brain wants things chunked into whole stories.
2. Memory limits can be expanded. The carrying capacity of memory can be expanded if you provide enriched content
---------
So what makes some information and some memories stick better than others?
The brain is not best compared to a computer. It's a machine that helps us survive. It tries to tell stories to make sense of our environment.
As trainers, it's simple stuff that makes it easier. Start with a rhetorical question "What do you feel is the best way to deal with a difficult person?" By challenging people to fill in the gaps -- they will remember better. This is so simple!
3. Memory can be unlimited. New information needs to be wrapped within meaningful shells.
----
Video has more carrying capacity then text -- 100 words with lilt and tone and a face -- more richness than text. Create a world where human beings talk to each other.
Synchronized transcript that you can review and highlight.
Add rich context, emotionally laden, and interactive.
How does visual information pass through your brain? Info that passes through left visual field goes to right brain; info through right visual field goes to left brain.
Left side of brain processes language
Right side of brain processes emotion
4. Memory is emotional. the brain attaches both cognitive and emotional tags to information.
Your training will be more effective if you are unembarrassed about including emotion. Discussing love life is more interesting than talking about hair net. So how can you pull in training about hair nets to include your love life?
We've got to give dignity to the content and the learners by developing engaging and meaningful content. Weave in every lesson you can using emotion -- it will stick for a much longer time.
-------
Recall is profoundly different with the addition of a contextual image. He divides us into two groups and has half the group close their eyes while he shows the other group a picture. Then he describes a procedure. It makes no sense to the group who did not see the picture. Group 2 got it because they saw the picture. (It was about laundry). Group 1 didn't know where they were going -- when he showed us all the picture, group 1 said "Ohhh..." (why didn't you tell me that...
If you tell people where they are going ahead of time, you make a profound difference in recall.
5. Context increases memory
-----
6. Levels of processing affects memory. Author your materials in a way that forces learners to engage with the material in a deep and personal way.
He asked us to look at a series of corporate logos. Half of us wrote down whether we thought it was a good or bad company (making it emotional); the other half were asked to evaluate the letters in the logos. THEN later he asks us to rmember teh logos (which was not our original task). Those who made an emotional evaluated remembered more logos.
-----
The forgetting curve (Ebbinghaus)
Within 20 minutes you've lost 20%, within two hours you've lost 70%
Encoding information vs. retrieving information
Both need to be practiced. If you encoded a book two weeks and now for the exam you re-read the book -- you're practicing the encoding part. But you're not practicing the retrieving part.
Forgetting is not the failure of memory. forgetting is a process that the brain uses to reduce the amount of knowledge it has to maintain. The brain purges a LOT of info that it thinks is unimportant.
So how do you tell the brain that something is important? How do you tag it?
what specific events do you give to a person following training to make that training stick?
Brain and Memory: Seven Tips that Improve E-Learning
Arthur Kohn, PhD
Fulbright Professor of Cognitive Science
He starts us off with a memory test. He gives us 15 words in turn and then after he's said them all, we write them down in any order:
(I remembered 12 out of 15 of them!)
Primacy effect: the word that come first we remembered the most - it was the most rehearsed.
The word cotton -- most recently said was also remembered. The words in the middle were not as well remembered...
We are organic machines.
You would think you encode a word. But what you encode in your brain is a representation of that word or connotations you have with that word. (e.g., if you heard the word switch, you have may have remembered the word light as a connotation of switch).
There is no difference, biochemically, between a true memory and an implanted memory. It is incredibly easy to implant memories in people's minds.
The constructed nature of memory.
1. Memory is Constructive. Our brains often invent our memories in creative ways.
---------
Take control over the content that you want your students to learn. Here are 40 facts you need to remember. As a teacher, that's your fault when the student doesn't remember, not the student's.
Skinner: "if the pidgeon fails to behave like I think they will, the pidgeon is right and I'm wrong."
How do we educate uneducated,
Create context around random letters (he shows us FB INB AAN DIB MHI PPAO SHA and asks us to remember that. Much easier to remember if you see it as FBI NBA AND IBM HIPPA OSHA).
"Chunking" - we can hold 7 independent facts, plus or minus two. But if I can enrich that content by combining things we can remember a lot more! The brain wants things chunked into whole stories.
2. Memory limits can be expanded. The carrying capacity of memory can be expanded if you provide enriched content
---------
So what makes some information and some memories stick better than others?
The brain is not best compared to a computer. It's a machine that helps us survive. It tries to tell stories to make sense of our environment.
As trainers, it's simple stuff that makes it easier. Start with a rhetorical question "What do you feel is the best way to deal with a difficult person?" By challenging people to fill in the gaps -- they will remember better. This is so simple!
3. Memory can be unlimited. New information needs to be wrapped within meaningful shells.
----
Video has more carrying capacity then text -- 100 words with lilt and tone and a face -- more richness than text. Create a world where human beings talk to each other.
Synchronized transcript that you can review and highlight.
Add rich context, emotionally laden, and interactive.
How does visual information pass through your brain? Info that passes through left visual field goes to right brain; info through right visual field goes to left brain.
Left side of brain processes language
Right side of brain processes emotion
4. Memory is emotional. the brain attaches both cognitive and emotional tags to information.
Your training will be more effective if you are unembarrassed about including emotion. Discussing love life is more interesting than talking about hair net. So how can you pull in training about hair nets to include your love life?
We've got to give dignity to the content and the learners by developing engaging and meaningful content. Weave in every lesson you can using emotion -- it will stick for a much longer time.
-------
Recall is profoundly different with the addition of a contextual image. He divides us into two groups and has half the group close their eyes while he shows the other group a picture. Then he describes a procedure. It makes no sense to the group who did not see the picture. Group 2 got it because they saw the picture. (It was about laundry). Group 1 didn't know where they were going -- when he showed us all the picture, group 1 said "Ohhh..." (why didn't you tell me that...
If you tell people where they are going ahead of time, you make a profound difference in recall.
5. Context increases memory
-----
6. Levels of processing affects memory. Author your materials in a way that forces learners to engage with the material in a deep and personal way.
He asked us to look at a series of corporate logos. Half of us wrote down whether we thought it was a good or bad company (making it emotional); the other half were asked to evaluate the letters in the logos. THEN later he asks us to rmember teh logos (which was not our original task). Those who made an emotional evaluated remembered more logos.
-----
The forgetting curve (Ebbinghaus)
Within 20 minutes you've lost 20%, within two hours you've lost 70%
Encoding information vs. retrieving information
- encoding = taking knowledge and encoding it into the brain
- retrieving = bringing it back out
Both need to be practiced. If you encoded a book two weeks and now for the exam you re-read the book -- you're practicing the encoding part. But you're not practicing the retrieving part.
Forgetting is not the failure of memory. forgetting is a process that the brain uses to reduce the amount of knowledge it has to maintain. The brain purges a LOT of info that it thinks is unimportant.
So how do you tell the brain that something is important? How do you tag it?
what specific events do you give to a person following training to make that training stick?
- Reinforcement - quizzing
- Depth of processing
- Generative retrievals
- Social elaboration
- Coaching
Give a student a lesson. Two days later give them a quiz ('according to the instructor, what was the most important first step). After two days ask them to retrieve critical information. It gives them the opp to practice retrieving it.
Touch 3 times (2 days, 2 weeks, 2 months)
The 2 day touch is fact based -- recall facts
After 2 weeks build in elaborative recall. Now ask them -- "Hey, according to that lecture on XXX how can you imagine using that info in our organization?" Then the student gives a written response. So his ideas get fed into a social learning environment.
2 month touch -- ask that same person -- "can you give us examples of how you've used this in your organization?" (so here's the return on investments, here's your Kirkpatrick...)
No one learns from a single pass. Even if it's outstanding training, no one learns in a single pass. Find every way you can to give people the opportunity to recall your information. You'll be cueing their brain to remember this info -- that it's salient.
The forgetting curve is brutal.
Get this and you can convince your organization to touch the learner - 2 days, 2 weeks, 2 months.
7. Booster Training (don't forget the forgetting curve!)
----
www.aklearning.com
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