Flash For Learning

Inspired a bit by Tom King’s article on authoring tools, I started playing with Google Trends and was a little interested in how E-Learning is faring against the notion of Performance Support — my idea being that E-Learning is stuff we have to evaluate, manage and track the learner’s interaction with — and performance support being, perhaps, not so rigid.

Here’s my not-so-scientific report:

E-Learning is by far more popular in searches, though the volume of searches definitely has dropped from 2004 (which we can discuss by itself ad nauseum as far as reasons why people are searching less for E-Learning). But in 2007, in particular, the notion of “Performance Support” has gained much more buzz in news references. Now, this can mean a lot of things, but the fact that E-Learning never makes a blip in the news probably says something, too.

As we make E-Learning smaller and more granular… are we naturally evolving a model of instruction to something more like Performance Support?

By the way — as an interesting post-script to this, the top 10 regions, in order, who are literally looking for Performance Support, are…

1. South Korea
2. India
3. Singapore
4. Australia
5. Taiwan
6. United Kingdom
7. Canada
8. United States
9. Netherlands
10. China

Anyone want to take a stab at how employee productivity by nation matches up with this ranking for a search?

One of the links that came across my Del.icio.us feed this weekend was a little post about how to make a living at being a freelance web designer without having to be really good at design. The author wrote about the 80-20 rule — that basically getting 80% competent at being a web designer wasn’t really hard — but that last 20% to go from competent to awesome was really really tough, and takes a very long time.

With learning content so similar in every technical way to web content, the same rules apply, but as with everything in our trade, it’s got a little bit of a twist to it.

Keep reading for an example of real action items from a cursory review of existing content being modified for a new version of the learning content. Continue Reading »

So this morning I was reading Phillip Hutchinson’s post on pipwerks.com linking to video profiles of people with disabilities — mild to severe — using assistive technology to communicate, work and improve their lives.

When I worked as a contractor for DoD and Homeland Security, accessibility was given the due lip service, and that was about the extent to which content was made accessible for 508. Truth be told, most of the content I’ve worked on commercially has been much the same treatment, where we talk about the need to make things accessible but rarely is any effort put toward doing so.

But when I was at Learning 2007, I snuck into Tom King’s session on SCORM - 10 Years After and 10 Years Ahead. I got there right as he was winding up the session, and he said something that was remarkably profound and insightful — which was something to the effect that accessibility isn’t a problem of the disabled, but actually a tool that helps us improve our design for our own use. In interface design, I’d say that’s especially true.

If you think about the iPhone (and who doesn’t) — my kid can move pictures around and navigate the iPhone. There’s been plenty of YouTube videos of dogs pawing at the iPhone and their able to navigate it, as well (even if they don’t know what they’re actually doing more than at a Pavlovian level). That’s not an accident, folks — it’s an excellent study in accessible visual design. Now the iPhone is probably the least usable device for a blind person — but let’s think about web design then. People who have poor visual acuity need structured information in a web page, text that is large enough to read in clear areas that is unencumbered by distractors.

Guess what? We all benefit from clean design, too.

Phillip has some decent links to W3C’s accessibility guidelines, too.

One of my favorite non-fiction titles of the last three years is “A Whole New Mind: Why Right-Brainers Will Rule the Future” by Dan Pink. It’s like the quickest read you’ll ever go through and you won’t put it down once you start it. It’s provocative.

Pink uses the brain as a metaphor for the economy. Left-brain vs. Right-brain is mostly a myth, but each half does handle tasks differently. Left-brain activities used to matter a lot, but their value has decreased as emerging markets have grown more efficient and effective at the logic-based tasks. What has been undervalued and what provides a better, more competitive opportunity is in the creative, big-picture, holistic skills that are hard to outsource and hard to automate. Empathy as a business model, as an example. To survive in the economy today, you need to go where others can’t — Design.

Design as a Competency

Utility + Significance = Consumption

In a world where there is incredible abundance, utility is everywhere and easy to satisfy. So to differentiate, you have to focus on significance, of which one component is Design. Charter schools are now teaching kids through Design, smuggling in math, science and history. At a larger level, you see a merger of art, design and business training. Pink states in his book (and in person) that the MFA is the new MBA. There are lots of joint programs in the academic arena between elite MBA programs collaborating with leading MFA programs at different schools (Pink).

If Pink is right… what impact does this have on learning, education and training? What would you do differently than what you (we) are already doing as a learning/education/training implementer?

Activity: Walk around for a week with a notebook and pen and journal all the experiences of great design you encounter — and all the experiences you have with bad design.

Story as a Competency

Facts still matter, but the ability to put facts in context is becoming more valuable than pulling information together quickly. When facts are free, the story becomes a market differentiator.

Meaning

In the last 50 years, the US GDP has tripled, but according to empirical studies, satisfaction has remained stagnant. This leads to the “Democratization of Self-Visualization.”

Activity: Picture yourself at 90. Set aside a half-hour to picture yourself at age 90, and reflect on your accomplishments.

Symphony

We tend in business to focus on “focus,” but there’s a growing need for people to see “the big picture.” Bosses don’t always know who the “star performers” are, but peers always do. Cognitive testing of star performers show there is only one competency that is correlated to performance — and that is the ability to see the big picture.

Even dyslexics overdevelop abilities to compensate for their inability to transpose the written word.

Empathy

Empathy is interesting because it’s hard to outsource or automate, so it provides an opportunity for competitive advantage. Customer Service is an area that can propel growth because it allows for a company to compete on the strength of empathy. Empathy can also be used to solve problems of Design, by putting yourself in someone else’s shoes and try and work with your products.

Activity: Take 20 pictures, put it into 20 slides, at 20 seconds each, automated to convey new ideas very quickly - a pecha-kucha (from Japan and spreading now)

Pink’s pecha-kucha is about Manga and its use in the business world (in Japan). Pink’s new book is a Manga on career productivity. The question he’s looking to answer

• 1980s - What color is your parachute?
• 1990s - Who moved my Cheese?
• 2000s - New kind of workers, Pink’s book answers: “WTF?”

Brilliant!!! Brilliant!!!