Some Good and Recent Conversations about Learning

Some Good and Recent Conversations about Learning

There are some wonderful people out there in the learning world. I've had the honor of connecting with many of them on LinkedIn.

I'll be updating this post with their names and what we talked about. But, for now, this one caught my eye today.

SEPT 254, 2019
Billy Wilson, The KUKU Chart.

https://www.linkedin.com/embed/feed/update/urn:li:share:6582964564105789440

If Common Sense is So Common...

If Common Sense is So Common...

eLearning is in hospice and on life support, yet we keep in alive. Is there hope?

My mom uses to say, "If common sense is so common, why don't more people have it?"

She was a very smart lady. And that question has guided me my career to discover what was keeping people from using their life experiences to guide their actions. 

But what is Common Sense?

The term was made famous by Thomas Paine just before the American Revolution in his his pamphlet, "Common Sense," entreating the colonial population to consider independence from Great Britain. I think his last paragraph of note sums up our present situation as shepherds of the knowledge domain, 

"These proceedings may at first appear strange and difficult; but, like all other 
steps which we have already passed over, will in a little time become familiar and 
agreeable; and, until an independence is declared, the Continent will feel itself like 
a man who continues putting off some unpleasant business from day to day, yet 
knows it must be done, hates to set about it, wishes it over, and is continually 

haunted with the thoughts of its necessity."

The modern interpretation of the term is "good sense and sound judgment in practical matters." As difficult as it is sometimes to admit we were wrong, and to take another approach, and stop "putting off some unpleasant business," our dependence on eLearning to impart knowledge, foster mastery, and support success is doomed to failure.

Strong words, I know.

Why is eLearning doomed to fail those who invest shareholder money into developing a workforce that can compete against the rest in their industry? Why is eLearning failing to fire the imaginations and passions of students to deal with life's struggles as eloquently as Paine?

In my opinion, forged after 50 years of experience in the knowledge business, we've made common sense the enemy. We're putting off the unpleasant task of challenge and struggle after the learning event to reinforce what knowledge was acquired and to build the skills and confidence of the learner.

It's this missing component, and others, that make eLearning ineffective in fostering common sense. Janus's article* also completes the models and theories related to learning and eLearning in general.

I believe that those who lead the world of "Learning" have forgotten the Forgetfulness Curve.  More on that soon.

Resources:

Paine, Thomas, Common Sense, Pamphlet, January 10, 1776

Fain, Paul, Takedown of Online Education, January 16, 2019,  https://www.insidehighered.com/digital-learning/article/2019/01/16/online-learning-fails-deliver-finds-report-aimed-discouraging  

*Janus, Steffen Soulejman, Capturing Solutions for Learning and Scaling Up: Documenting Operational Experiences for Organizational Learning and Knowledge Sharing, July 17, 2017, https://www.scribd.com/doc/354392168/Capturing-Solutions-for-Learning-and-Scaling-Up-Documenting-Operational-Experiences-for-Organizational-Learning-and-Knowledge-Sharing

Are You Making Vanilla Pudding?

Is your online educational adventure plain or spectacular?

In the kitchen, there is a difference between a cook and a chef. A cook makes food ready to eat, a chef prepares a meal to delight the senses, tickles the palate, and soothes the soul.

One typically returns to a restaurant because of a memorable meal, or the staff remembers your name; whichever the reason, something clicked.

As instructional designers, are we cooks or chefs? Are we destined to a life of coerced confinement inside of linear lessons? Is the only way out to "Please click next to continue?"

More and more, I see less and less learning. Less self-discovery and more rote memorization. Less critical thinking and more compliance to standard procedures.

And, below the horizon, unbeknownst to many of us, there is a parallel universe of crowd training, social media learning pods, ephemeral learning experiences; it's here today and gone in an instant.

There's a time and place for Vanilla Pudding. It's easy to make. It's low cost. It's easy on the wallet. However, it is not memorable. It does not expand one's experiences. It does not challenge us to imagine.

It's no secret that eLearning designed for adults has not lived up to its promise of a replacement for instructor-led classroom style education. The apologists made their excuses. The web evolved. New technologies made eLearning faster, more media filled but where is the soul of creativity? Are we doomed to a future of drag and drop and multiple choice?

I reminisce about the days when I really had to think about designing a curriculum. When I could work with a client to perform a useful needs analysis and identify the behaviors in their people that were hurting them, hurting productivity, and risking the future of the organization.

I see less and less of this introspection. Managers seem afraid to admit the truth; they are afraid, period.

Fear seems to be driving a lot of the compliance training - fear of litigation, fear of failure, and fear of looking like a fool.

But, the people who truly want to learn so they can be better people and better professionals, these are the innovators who are short-circuiting the traditional LMS pathways.

At the threshold of something new (I know you can sense it, too), I challenge you to discover new modalities that are relevant to today's learners. The web has changed everything! We educators need to change along with it.

Are we doomed?

The essential mechanism by which we have been learning for millennia is being rewired for us. We're being taught to distrust traditional teaching methods (i.e. Socratic) and embrace just-in-time knowledge transfer. Applications running on tablets and smart phones are quickly replacing mentors, teachers, professors, and even supervisors.

The saving grace among all this chaos is that learning is less a singular event and is slowly becoming a social experience. In social learning, each of us becomes both the teacher and the student.

New tools and applications allow us to use video, animation, annotations, and even create fun interactions to illustrate what we need to share.

Solving the Field Training Problem

If you are a technical manager, responsible for the performance of a field force of installers, system techs, and maintenance techs, you know the problem. Every hour your people are out of the field for training is lost productivity. You have to juggle schedules, pay overtime, or lose work because of it. 

But, you need your people to be capable, confident, and knowledgeable. You need them to acquire, hone, and master the skills of the job. They must have training and education and there has to be a way to measure if what they learned is having a positive impact on your team's performance.

Or else this happens:

Traditional methods of removing personnel from the field are not relevant anymore. Your people are learning on their own. 

They are:: 

• sending informal Q&A via texts and phone calls to other techs
• accessing Google and YouTube
• accessing manuals on vendor sites
• accessing their own-created knowledge bases

Read this link. It's about kids and parents but is relevant to our situation

Do you care about certifications anymore? Are you rewarding your people when they acquire a certification? We're hearing that tech managers don't believe these awards anymore. Passing a test doesn't always turn into stellar performance. In the field, there's a lot more to success than a piece of paper. But, certifications are important to both the tech and the employer. Just make sure you have a way to verify that the new-found knowledge can be put to good use.

Certification: What does it mean to you?

So, what is a tech manager to do? 

1. We suggest that you reinvent the learning delivery platform. Scrap the LMS or at least use it less and less. Make all your learning self-paced and easily accessible. Reduce your learning down to 30-second and 60-second chunks and "suggest" playlists of chunks.
2. Encourage your people in the field to send videos (moderated, of course) that will help other techs get the job done right. 
3. Create an easy to access repository of all, and I mean all, data sheets, specs, and user manuals on everything a tech might find in the field, including tools, equipment, and materials.
4. Create a culture of mentoring and challenge. I won't go into detail here. for that, you need to call me. Let's just say that this single element can mean the difference between success and failure.
5. Change the role of your training department. Make their job a daily challenge of supporting the people in the field, the headend, the office and the call centers. Stop creating and reinventing training and start optimizing what you already have.

So, whether you like it or not, traditional eLearning is dead. Your people are learning on-the-job and the younger ones are making the more seasoned (older) techs look outdated. Give them all the tools they need to succeed! We can show you how.

Dilemma for the Cable Operators

For decades the cable companies have said, NO FTTH! It's blasphemy to the die-hard HFC folks. We didn't spend the last thirty years learning how to fine tune the cable system coax plant and customer drop just to see it all swept away by some stinking fiber!

Well we all know about progress; it follows the route to the biggest pot of gold. Once that pot of gold is FTTH and not HFC, guess what?

There are some who think it's necessary to rework DOCSIS so it can run over fiber.

There are some who think that replacing the drop with LTE will be the answer.

There are some who think an all IP DOCSIS 3.1 is the answer.

And, you have all the cable operators wondering which of these is the right choice. Each one means a visit to the investors, the banks and the CFO.

If it were your money, where would you place your bet?

Now, to make matters worse, which FTTH technology do you choose? EPON, GEPON, or GPON? Maybe it's just RFoG or perhaps you go wireless. Which one? FDD-LTE or TDD-LTE?

Or do you say, "The heck with it!" and just concentrate on stealing those ripe and juicy commercial accounts out of the hands of the Telcos and run Metro-Ethernet? OK, now which technology; WDM, EPON, GEPON, or GPON?

See? It's not easy. You need a handicapper (shameful plug - that's us), someone who doesn't work for a manufacturer. You need to see where the standards committees are headed and which manufacturers have investor confidence. You just can't rely on your brother-in-law to tell you which way to go, you have to make an informed decision.

We also need to face some truths here; it's going to be FTTH eventually. It may be a hybrid fiber-wireless solution, too. A new acronym, HFW.

Don't you think you need to learn and teach your techs about this stuff now?

The Internet of Things

No, I did not coin the phrase but I wish I had. Each time I start writing about training in this chaotic broadband world, there is a new device to think about, to inform, educate, install, and maintain.

The customer premise devices are making it difficult to maintain any control over the user experience.

Let me ask you, as a technical operations manager, you get a call that says the customer's washing machine can't talk to the Internet, your Internet. Or that the customer's kid's tablets are running slow connecting to YOUR Internet.

See, no matter what the problem really is, you run the Internet for them. You are the lightning rod.

So what are you going to do, hide your head in the sand? Tell them to call their manufacturer?

Oh yeah...can we say CHURN?

So, 2013 is not only The Year of the Internet of Things, it also has to be The Year of Learning how to Install, Configure, and Maintain the Internet of Things.

My, how the definition of CPE has grown; that single three- letter acronym, Customer Premise Equipment. No longer the realm of TVs, DVD players, tablets, smartphones, and computers, CPE now means: Thermostats, IP security cameras, Carbon monoxide alarms, fire alarms, burglar alarms, lighting controls, the refrigerator, washing machine, dryer, furnace, air conditioner, air cleaners, vacuums, blood pressure monitors, urine testers, toilets, ventilators, dog collars, litter boxes and sexual aids.

No, I am not advocating that we teach our technicians how to install configure and maintain the customer's sex toys.. wait, there may be an app for that... I am suggesting that every broadband provider consider the need for a document repository that grows and contains the instructions for any type of device a customer may try and connect to our networks.

One way or another, and that other way is usually through Google, the technician is going to leave the customer with a smile on their face. And, if you don't make it easy for the technician to do their job, they will take up a lot of time learning the same information over and over again.

That's money off the bottom line. That's a customer waiting for a tech because they are trying to figure out why the dryer isn't sending a text reporting that the clothes are dry or why the litter box isn't connecting to the Internet.

As I said, IT DOES NOT MATTER WHO MAKES THE CPE, if something goes wrong  it's the fault of YOUR INTERNET.

Here's what we recommend. 

• A set of YouTube Channel videos, in a few languages, that show the customer and the technician how install, configure, and maintain all sorts of CPE.
• A mobile-accessible knowledge base with manuals and diagrams and troubleshooting workflows.
• A lab, somewhere, that can be shared among all broadband providers, that tests and documents and rates the CPE's ability to work on all or systems.

Live long and prosper.