This is an environment within which a reluctance to learn is not an option – we have clients who are relying on our advice and design skills to turn their ideas and content into Apps. In most cases I’ve found that the early conversations I have with potential clients are mutually informative explorations of possibility, but there’s one area that often becomes a sticking point, and I thought that it would be useful to air that area here.

Mobile devices as tools for learning have enormous potential, but they are not necessarily the best medium for every educational purpose or content. One of my guiding professional principles covers this decision, i.e.

There is a process of question and response that needs to happen in order to determine the best form in which to present any material to target learners, and this process needs to extend to include the medium that best supports that presentation.

Where there is an indication that mobile devices are this best supporting medium then the learning design needs to be strongly influenced by the characteristics of the device(s) chosen. But earlier in the process there needs to be a set of questions that relate to the purpose of the learning interaction – what are we trying to achieve here? And it’s at this point that I often find that there is a lack of clarity in the thinking expressed by the client. In this situation there is one key area that will often produce the dialogue that will produce greater levels of understanding:

Is this primarily a “teaching” App, i.e. one that introduces the user to new knowledge, or an “deployment” App, i.e. one that supports the user in taking knowledge gained elsewhere and applying it to their needs and circumstances?

Put simply like this the difference between the two is easily discernible, but it is remarkable how many times I enter conversations with potential clients, only to discover that the distinction is, for them, not at all clear.

Of course there is unlikely to be a situation where a100% pure distinction is appropriate – teaching Apps will usually involve some element of scaffolding to help learning transfer, while deployment Apps usually benefit from e.g. the “information‘ buttons that access “aide memoire” reminders. The emphasis in the question above is on the word ‘primarily’. If a client decides on an equal emphasis on the two then we are into the realms of either designing two pieces of digital earning, one for each purpose, or a single elaborate design that will offer an extended learner engagement.

My suggestion would be, that, should you be contemplating moving some of your existing content to mobile devices, or creating learning Apps from scratch, then this fundamental question could serve as a great focus for thinking through what it is that you really want. Recently we at MLD have often entered early design conversations with clients, only for those conversations to come to a shuddering halt when there is no ready answer available. Clients sometimes seem unnecessarily embarrassed, about not having the answer to hand, and about the delay that will be caused by their having to go back in-house to reconsider their needs.

I’d encourage you to either get in touch with us at a very early stage in your contemplations around mobile learning and have the conversation with us about the conversations you need to have in-house: or make sure that you have fully explored the ‘why?’ and ‘what?‘ of your needs before you approach us to talk about ‘how?’

In any case it will be good to talk to you.

a) The time-lag between the delivery of a learning intervention and it’s observable impact in the workplace,

and

b) How positive the reaction of those experiencing the intervention will be.

Over the past couple of decades it appears to me that, in Western nations, we have grown to accept that there will be some delay in the delivery of a learning intervention and its effect being discernable in the workplace behaviour of employees who have participated. There seems to be little expectation that we will see people so convinced by the learning messages that they will immediately implement changes in their working practices. In most cases there is an apparent acceptance that the result will be a gradual trickle-through of the learning. This mind-set is probably unsatisfactory for everybody concerned, yet I suspect that I am as guilty as anybody else in perpetuating the mind-set in that I had not recognised just how pervasive it had become. It came as something of a surprise when I realised that a client in Africa was operating to a very different model. Designing a learning environment that not only accommodates, but expects, immediate and absolute transfer of learning was something that I realised that I had possibly not done for years.

Now I can’t claim that I have a great deal of experience of working in these emergent nations. As ever when I am co-designing a learning intervention with a client I am very much dependent on their local knowledge, and this is never more so than when working in a culturally unfamiliar situation. But the absolute conviction of my client that “if the design is right the employees will immediately start using the learning 100%” and his insistence that the design was built to support this presumption, came as both a challenge and a breath of fresh air. I’ve yet to find out if this trust is misplaced, but I found myself wondering why this wasn’t the case in more familiar markets and, in particular, was I part of the problem? Had I fallen into some kind of low-expectations trap? I can remember a time when this was not the case – but what about my recent work?

My sense of unease about potentially having allowed my expectations to become reduced was not helped by thinking through the confidence that had been voiced about the enthusiasm for learning that the employees would have. I compared this enthusiasm with the sentiments expressed in articles such as one I recently read, entitled “Why People Hate Training, and How to Overcome It”. What I was hearing from Africa was the antithesis of this – a real hunger for learning, and a passion to take that learning and run with it. If the scale of receptivity ran from ‘totally unenthusiastic and uninspired‘ at one end, to ‘totally inspired and open‘ at the other, where did I put my mental marker when I sat down to design a learning environment?

I don’t want to take this article into an exploration of cultural attitudes to learning, and the reasons that differences may exist here: although I acknowledge that these should be of central concern to the learning design community. My personal reflection has been around my role (and the role of the wider learning design community) in perpetuating these differences.

Are we, as a profession, guilty of a pattern of insidious, creeping assumption that learners are not going to be enthusiastic about workplace learning experiences, and that the transfer of learning from these experiences will be slow and ad-hoc?

If the answer to either part of this question is yes, then it’s a pretty serious indictment It is, however, notoriously difficult to review one’s own back catalogue with a view to unearthing the assumptions that were at work when the design was emerging. Compounding this is the fact that we are heavily dependent on the information we are given by our clients about the organisational context for any particular learning intervention. Easy excuses for past failings I acknowledge.

Consequently I have made a decision to focus on the future, a choice based on another (more conscious) assumption – that being aware of a potential bias will make me more likely to avoid its effect. So from now on I’m determined to believe two things:

1.That people will be enthused, engaged and excited about being involved in the learning environment that I create for them.

and

2.That people will perceive that the learning that they take away will have such potential workplace value that they will immediately tackle any obstacles to its full transfer.

My reasoning is, that if I believe these things, they will translate into my work. I don’t know whether there has been any compatible lack of belief in my prior work, I just think that we, as learning designers, need to continually challenge ourselves to make our aspirations for our work and the people who experience it the best they can be. In that I don’t think we’re any different to any other profession – it’s a matter of job satisfaction after all.

Last week I made a first move to put right this situation and had a great introductory meeting with the Director of Executive Education at LUMS, and one of her colleagues. At an early stage of the meeting, exploring the common ground of approaches and methodologies, she happened to say “we routinely use Kolb as a model”. I nodded and we moved on: the name being sufficient to establish a level of understanding about how they chose to work. Some models are so ubiquitous in their field that the name of the author is sufficient to convey a whole system of belief and practice, the Experiential Learning Cycle developed by David Kolb is just such an edifice. http://www.infed.org/biblio/b-explrn.htm

Yet there was something in that exchange that stuck in my mind, why can we be totally confident that a single reference can accurately convey such a depth of understanding? Surely the millions of words, often in the form of critical reflection, that have been written about Kolb’s research, make such unquestioned acceptance a risk? What meaning does the statement “we routinely use Kolb as a model” convey exactly? It was time to revisit the research!

A couple of hours of re-reading Kolb’s work, and some of the critiques that are readily available, reassured me. The core model of experiential learning still has a fundamental validity that serves as a basis for shared understanding, or a platform for associated research (see Peter Jarvis in the link above). But I couldn’t help reflecting on how staid and well, dated some of the concepts and language seemed to be. Somehow the way the model was presented seemed to be incongruent with the excitement and dynamism that experiential learning brings to my professional life. Was there, I wondered, a more contemporary way of representing the concepts that Kolb stated in the late 70’s and early 80’s?

Now I’m a great believer in serendipity – the sudden occurrences that happen when we don’t expect them, and which bring unexpected benefit – and my casual quest for a “contemporary Kolb” was answered from an unexpected source. The recent Learning Without Frontiers Conference brought together a diverse assembly of speakers with a shared interest in the future of education. Video footage of the speakers is available on the LWF website here, but my attention was drawn to the address given by Mitch Resnick, Director of Lifelong Kindergarten at MIT Media Lab.(I feel a strong case of title-envy coming on!) In his presentation, titled Learning from Scratch, Mitch points to the prevalent culture of assessment in schools, and the way that this culture is appearing earlier and earlier in formal education. He advocates a reversal of this trend, so that the ‘learning through play‘ concept that lies at the heart of the kindergarten movement, is extended as an element of all formal education.

As part of the Learning from Scratch presentation we are offered a model that looks to me to be a more contemporary, and, well playful, version of Kolb’s model

This is not to say that I’m going to abandon Kolb’s original terminology in the near future:

Experience – Reflect – Generalise – Apply

seems like a good way to describe what I do with my corporate clients. However, I am drawn to reflect on what the learning solutions I develop would be like if we worked with Mitch’s model in an overt way? If we were able to openly accept that creating and playing with ideas was simply that? If we gave ourselves permission to use our imagination around the problem before we even begin to think about the solution?

I think that Mitch Resnick is on to something.

And if you’re working with me in future, in an experiential learning environment, and you catch me smiling, it may just be that I’m working on a different model to the one that I told you we were going to be working on…..

Thinkers in the leadership field have wrestled with this phenomenon for centuries, and some very clever people have sought to give structure to its ephemeral nature to build the leadership development industry. So why is leadership such a persistent idea? Perhaps because when you witness a good leader in action there’s no denying that what you’re seeing and hearing is something special.

My current thoughts about leadership stem from being invited to work in Berlin last month, as the guest of a major global corporation with its roots in the printing sector. My clients had gathered in that great city to look back at a difficult year of massive internal change, to celebrate their successes, and to buy into a vision of what their future could be. That vision had been forged by a new, young, charismatic CEO and what he needed from the event was to have his top 120 sales managers to, quite literally, sign up to his vision. My role was to support this by experientially demonstrating and exploring the fundamental role of effective communication in realising a vision.

This isn’t an unusual commission for me and from the start I pretty well knew what I needed to deliver – not complacent but confident based on having been in that position many times in the past. Getting to the venue to brief the delegates who had volunteered to lead table conversations I was immediately aware of something different, a buzz that is very often missing from senior corporate gatherings. Briefing over, I was introduced to the CEO, and I immediately realised the source of the buzz that I had sensed earlier. I’ve never been much of a believer in charismatic leadership, but there was a definite aura of energy and excitement around this leader.

Well, after a seriously sociable night I returned the next morning and delivered my session. The response was powerful and professional, the people were warm and enthusiastic, the feedback was positive and valuable, and I left the venue with a great sense of a job well done. I then had a considerable wait at the airport, which gave me an opportunity to self-review and evaluate my own performance.

Why had the session gone so well?

What was it that got the people so involved?

What could I learn from the engagement?

I tried to answer my own questions honestly, and finally I came to the conclusion that I had really “upped my game”: something in the situation had brought out the best in me.

So what was it that had produced this result? I always try to give 100% to a client so how was it possible that this performance exceeded my own very high standards?

My conclusion, as you’ve probably already guessed, is that I was responding to the CEO. His leadership was so potent that it was bringing out the best not only in his own colleagues, but in those of us who had only a temporary connection with his organisation. This created a tangible aspiration and a confidence across the employees – just the kind of conditions that makes the introduction of a challenging learning activity both welcome and effective.

In my learning design work the leadership climate in the client organisation is a recognised variable, but it’s not something that I can often influence. I’ve always been aware of the way that this leadership climate needs to be acknowledged in the designs that I deliver to clients – but I’m beginning to wonder if I need to revisit just how influential this design consideration needs to be?

When I speak to clients about a problem situation there is a very common pattern in the language that many of them use when they describe the problem as they perceive it. Terms like problem space, field of influence, territories, operational area, overlapping interests and lines of sight tell me straight away that the speaker envisions the problem spatially. Thus the whole problem definition and problem solving processes become firmly rooted in ideas about movement in problem-space. This is perfectly good as a basis for designing solutions to problems that are static and fixed – the landscape stays still enough for long enough for the solution to be mapped out and navigated. The problem is that most organisations, particularly in modern business environments, are highly dynamic and can’t be relied on to stand still and wait for formal learning to be organised and implemented.

This is where an early attempt at ‘reframing’ the way that the problem is perceived by those concerned will often pay dividends. In doing this, we have a number of options available, but perhaps the most frequently used, and potentially successful, is to attempt to have those concerned think of the problem in temporal terms i.e. as a dynamic, time-dependent issue. Using this frame we define the past, present and future of the problem in terms of how it has emerged and how it might potentially unfold in time to come. The idea is to work to develop a narrative (or series of narratives) that describe the evolution and possible futures of the problem.

Now this might sound complicated, but inside every human being is a storyteller waiting to get out, and the role of the facilitator in these situations is to assist those concerned in allowing their stories to emerge. Over the years I’ve developed several tools to support this process e.g. RSVP’s toolbox product “Voyage Mapping”, which can add a focus for the reframing exercise. Presenting the problem solving initiative through the use of a professional tool is often reassuring to those involved as it overcomes much of the resistance that might be attached to an enjoyable approach to dealing with serious issues. Additionally there may be significant value in assembling in one place the interested parties to compare and contrast the timelines they develop around the problem, and a tangible focus for this group based activity has obvious advantages.

However, simply having people developing their own narratives around the problem can have a significant effect on their perceptions around its solidity and solubility. The problem defined as a spatial landscape has hard edges and clear boundaries, the same problem defined as a narrative sequence is fluid and dynamic. The spatial frame suffers from a sense of fixedness and inertia that can never attach to the unceasing flow of time. So getting people to talk about the problem as a narrative will immediately make the achievement of a satisfactory solution more likely. A word of warning here: be careful that what you’re achieving is a true narrative, it’s very easy to design a process that results in a series of time-defined landscapes (this is how it looked at this time, a year later it looked like this….etc).

I’m always keen to explore and share tools and techniques around this type of reframing exercise, so if you are interested in a discussion around how, when and why you might try to move towards a temporal approach to organisational problem-solving, please get in touch via our website.

The positive side of this segmentation is that it has stimulated much more innovation in specialist areas of education delivery, and it’s also made conversations about learning solutions easier to frame. However, on the negative side, it has generated a pervasive sense of competing bandwagons and “the next must-have methodology” often driven by a desire to future-proof an investment against rapid obsolescence. Blended learning, in it’s many manifestations, has offered some relief from single sourcing, but, too often, procurement decisions still seem to be driven by the needs of contractual simplicity rather than the needs of target learners.

The landscape that has resulted from this legacy of learning decisions means that I often speak to clients who are unable to make a large investment in new learning materials and processes. This may be because they have little new budget, and/or because there is a strong pressure on them to extract more value out of previous major investments in learning.

“We’d like to use System X because we spent a packet of cash on it and

we’ve not really seen the results we were promised.”

Now I don’t like “System X’s”: one-size-fits-all solutions to the complex and diverse learning needs that exist within every organisation. RSVP/MLD doesn’t advocate this kind of approach and we’ve spent years developing small-scale, versatile tools that can be integrated into custom approaches that are very responsive to the needs of defined target learners. But nor do I like telling clients that they have made poor decisions in the past and that there’s little to be done other than to move on and trust that the next decision is a better one.

So lately there have been a number of occasions that I’ve been in the position of recycling learning investments: finding new ways of using tools, materials and approaches that otherwise would be consigned to a (actual or metaphorical) cupboard in somebody’s office. In a lot of ways this is an interesting challenge, because we’re not just talking about the materials themselves, but a population whose learning has been impacted by the materials. Let me give you a couple of examples:

I had a conversation with a major utility company who had put a significant proportion of their employees through a work-related profiling tool. The initiative had been successful and the vocabulary of that tool could be heard being widely used across the company. People knew their profile and there was considerable evidence of this affecting behaviours and career choices in positive ways. However, new strategy needed employees to think outside of the comfortable boxes that they had defined and adopted using the language of the profile, and this was proving very difficult to do due to the lack of any progressive way of building on the existing learning. The profile had become a barrier to development in that people were challenging what they were being asked to do differently, a frequently experienced response was:

“I can see what you need but I can’t do that because my profile says that I’m

best at doing what I already do”

The senior manager to whom I spoke reflected on perceived mistakes in how the adoption and interpretation of the profile had been managed, and the difficulties that she anticipated in moving beyond it. My response was to ‘reframe’ the situation to suggest that this wasn’t about challenging the wisdom of the profile as it’s widespread adoption was indicative of a major success. The new strategy needed to be implemented in a way that acknowledged and exploited this success i.e. much more of a bottom-up approach utilising the self awareness that the profile had developed, rather than a pre-profile, top-down approach. The learning environment that would support implementation was about extending the personal learning of employees to encompass the collective learning of organisation – not “what replaces the profile?” but “what works with it to renewed effect?”

The second example is very different, a business school that had made a major investment in creating an on-campus outdoor facility, but was recognising that a younger generation of business leaders were finding it hard to translate the learning that they undoubtedly took from the team-focused, challenge-course experience, to their workplace experience in globally located virtual teams. The business school were struggling to sell the dynamic and meaningful opportunity offered by the outdoor facility as a component on all but their most junior programmes.

In this case the solution wasn’t about changing the facility, or even changing the way they were using it. The solution was to create some new activities that added mobile devices to the experience: building an effective requirement to use the devices as core components in the solution of the problems posed by the challenge-course. The additional requirements for research, remote communication, information management and leadership translated as familiar features into the unfamiliar and pressured environment offered by the facility. The result is a massive extension to the range of learning outcomes that can effectively be tackled using the outdoor facility, and elevating it from an investment in individual and team development, to one which can equally well be applied to develop 21st Century business skills.

So if you are faced with a learning challenge that seems to indicate “moving-on” from previous investment in learning, try thinking about your challenge as “building-on” instead. I’ve enjoyed my recent challenges of helping people to think in this way, so please get in touch if a conversation about recycling learning would be helpful.

We also plan a number of new product launches in 2012 both in the ‘physical world’ with RSVP Design and in the ‘App world’ via our sister organisation Mobile Learning Design. If there is a tool, activity or mobile device application you’d like to see developed for a training need, then please email your suggestions to graham@rsvpdesign.co.uk and we’ll consider it as part of our product development planning process.

It was great to see that without any input from RSVP Design, two of our activities were mentioned: Challenging Assumptions was described as a ‘go-to’ activity by a training consultant from Australia and a number of people in the USA cited Colorblind (even if they didn’t spell it correctly!) as their favourite (or favorite) ever tool.

It is great to know that these products are now being used and recommended around the world and it made me think of my favourites from our portfolio, apart from the obvious pair mentioned above.

I guess there would be three more that I’ve used more than any others and that still give me a buzz every time I see people learning from  them.

1. The first has to be Images of Organisations. These cleverly designed and produced cartoon images of the feelings people experience in a range of organisational situations are so versatile and open discussion on everything from teamworking and leadership to change management and training itself.

2. My second choice would be Webmaster – a challenging exercise that brings large groups together in a problem-solving and process improvement activity that represents a wide range of organisational challenges. It offers masses of opportunities to learn about teamwork, planning, supervisory leadership – and appeals to all those learners who like a real ‘hands-on job’ to get stuck into!

3. My third choice would be a less well-known product: the T-trade toolbox that combines two great inter-group activities – the tough negotiation exercise that is T-Trade itself and the fantastic accompanying exercise, PosT-iT. Despite seeing this activity hundreds of times, I never cease to be amazed at the patterns of human behaviour it illustrates and the potential for conflict, competition and collaboration that it raises….

If my favourite activities have triggered your interest, read more about them through the following links.

http://rsvpdesign.co.uk/shop/colourblind%C2%AE-p-13.html

http://rsvpdesign.co.uk/shop/challenging-assumptions%C2%99-p-27.html

http://rsvpdesign.co.uk/shop/images-of-organisations%C2%99-p-70.html

http://rsvpdesign.co.uk/shop/webmaster%C2%AE-p-26.html

http://rsvpdesign.co.uk/shop/ttrade%C2%99-p-12.html

Please let us know your favourites and how and where you use them!

Best wishes,

Ann

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-15693508

Is our ability to empathise with others and develop strong social and inter-personal skills genetically pre-disposed? If it is, what implications does this have for those of us involved in the design and delivery of training and learning in the skills associated with relationship building and ‘soft skills’?

This research leans towards an argument that some people may have more natural, inborn empathy, and attract higher levels of trust, than others because of the presence of a specific gene.

I guess we all know individuals who transmit warmth, empathy, care and concern and seem to be naturally good listeners. We probably also know others who find making emotional connections difficult and struggle with developing and maintaining close personal relationships. So, if this research suggests that there is a genetic link, is it possible to develop and enhance these important inter-personal skills in those who don’t seem to have this inherent ability?

And is this linked to Emotional Intelligence? Are we likely to find that there is a genetic connection there, too?

The principles behind NLP suggest that the observation and understanding of excellence in communication allows for replication: ie. if we study great communicators and model our behavioural and thinking patterns on them, we too can demonstrate the ‘magic’. Does the same apply here? If we pay close attention to what the ‘natural empathisers’ do, can we all learn to relate to others in the same way?

Many of RSVP Design’s practical learning resources and experiential activities are designed to highlight and reinforce skills of listening, effective communication, awareness of the needs of self and others and contributions to the development and maintenance of effective teams.

I’ve always used the activities such as Colourblind ( http://rsvpdesign.co.uk/shop/colourblind%C2%AE-p-13.html ) to help people to observe and investigate effective behaviours, identifying what people say and do that achieves the results they want and strengthens trust, confidence and inter-personal bonds in the process. I’ve also worked on an assumption that with practice and support, everyone can develop these important skills.

This article brings us back to the age old debate about ‘nature’ and ‘nurture’. If it is true that some people have more inherent ‘empathy’ than others, perhaps it is even more important that we provide more structured support and rehearsal opportunity for those for whom ‘soft skills’ don’t come naturally!

What do you think?

Ann

To celebrate this anniversary (Colourblind’s 21st birthday in 2012) I’ve been working on the development of a tool that extends the methodology and learning potential that have made the original exercise such a success. As you might guess, this is a ‘legacy project’, after all I’m working with the jewel in RSVP’s product crown, and that brings with it a whole series of pressures that, I have to admit, are pretty unfamiliar. Building on success requires an approach that is very different from the remedial, problem-responsive mindset which we need to adopt in our engagement with corporate clients. So how do you go about building on the obvious success of a learning tool or initiative?

My thinking over the past couple of months has been around a series of balance points that I think will lead to a successful follow-up:

An obvious affiliation and link to the character of the original

+

A retention of features that made the original a success

+

A protection of the values that underpin the original design

VS

The novelty and innovation of a new process or tool

+

New features and applications that extend the offering

+

A recognition that the success of the original has altered the product value landscape.

Trying to hit the ‘sweet-spot’ that lies at the heart of these balance equations has led to a rejection of many easy-fix solutions e.g.

“the same exercise with a harder solution”

“the same exercise but bigger and/or more complex”

“the same exercise but with the engagement of more faculties and senses”

In any other product-development field these may be perfectly legitimate responses to the need for a follow-up to a successful original. However, in the realm of learning design, a successful product is, by definition, one that changes its consumers, so the follow-up product cannot be designed to meet the same set of learning needs. What is required is a learning tool that acknowledges and accommodates the learning that has already taken place through its predecessor.

This means that we must begin with an understanding of what learning was provoked by the first tool.

But when we have a tool that has been adopted and adapted by thousands of educators to achieve a bewildering array of learning outcomes this is never going to be an easy task!

The approach that I’ve taken is to engage in some pretty deep dialogue with colleagues who I know use Colourblind in ways that I don’t. Ann Alder, for instance, is an expert in facilitation and trainer training, and she frequently uses Colourblind as a way of illustrating patterns of conversation within a working group. This isn’t something that I would tackle so it’s been good to discuss with Ann the learning she achieves and how this could be developed through a new extension activity.  Multiply this conversation many times, with experts in very different areas of human development, and you can see how I have created a checklist of what kind of learning experience the new tool needs to deliver.

So watch the RSVP space for details of when ‘Daughter of Colourblind’ transitions from the cardboard prototypes we’re playing with now, to hit the shelves in all of it’s ‘Anniversary Edition’ glory. We have great hopes that it will win as many friends as the original did.