Kraken awakes...slowly

iBook Author 3D version?

Well I awake from a blogging slumber in time for what should be one of the most vibrant Learning Technologies Conference and Exhibitions. The world appears also to have finally awoken fully to the benefits technology can bring to learning and training. Particularly when you take a more fundamental step in redesigning the whole experience so that the technology is at the heart of your solution not just an add on.

The past year has been a busy affair. A large part of it was leading the consultancy, design and delivery of Business Link's My New Business service on behalf of Epic. This provides substantial online learning support for those entering self employment and starting up their own business ventures, a growing band of people as the world economy continues its shift into a new era. You see the free service here - I'd welcome all feedback. You can also read a good article summarising the project by Alex Reeve, who led the Business Link e-learning content team.

Also 2011 saw some good progress on Retenda, an innovative learning reinforcement platform I've developed. More on that in the future.

In terms of knowledge sharing, the year saw me focus more on Twitter as a social Learning tool. It's a great way to quickly assimilate and share useful links to all sorts of digital resources. It's proved a great tool for me and I hope my followers. But I'm ready again for a longer form stint of article writing now. A step at a time though - from micro-blogging, to midi-blogging perhaps. Then see where we get to.

See you at Learning Technologies and Learning Without Frontiers. If you can't make it join in on Twitter using this hashtag - #ltuk12  and #lwf12.

Augmenting reality - technology is going invisible

Here's my article, just published on Trainingzone as the headline story, exploring how augmented reality and mobile technology promise to radically improve learning effectiveness. Would value your comments and feedback.
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The pace of technological innovation continues to surprise. This week reports suggest that, in theory at least, it will be possible to create new materials that divert light around themselves to render objects invisible. The magical cloaks of Harry Potter (also in the news this week), no longer seem so far-fetched.

The technology of today, however, is also striving for invisibility. It's getting smaller, more integrated and embedded into the world around us. As a result the way in which we interact with it is changing in fundamental ways. This Christmas, one of those must-have gifts is Kinect, the add-on for Microsoft's X-Box game console. Kinect drops the need for a physical controller meaning the user can play a game simply by waving their arms, hands, legs or any other body part for that matter. The reported levels of engagement this generates are profound as the suspension of disbelief, so core to game-play, is deeper and more sustained.

This gesture-based control is all around us, on our smartphones, tablets, touchscreen laptops, TVs and as things develop, on any appliance or surface that needs a communications interface of some sort. But that's not all, technology is becoming wearable in the form of heads-up display glasses that let you watch movies on what feels like a virtual 52" TV screen, cameras that record everything you say and do, storing it in your 'life-cache' or streaming it straight to Facebook for all to enjoy. All this breaks down the barriers between real and virtual worlds.

In fact we can 'augment reality' with applications on our phones that can automatically annotate the world around you (as seem through your camera lens) with useful, contextualised information that helps make better sense of your surroundings and so inform the choices you make. While many of these applications (Layar and Google Goggles are two such examples) are entertainment-oriented and aimed at promoting social sharing or marketing, the additional potential for learning and performance support cannot be ignored. For example, a neat barcoding technology called QR codes, can be used to tag a physical space and with the simple process of pointing your camera phone at the code can automatically call up information stored online that is relevant to that physical place. This is a great way to help new staff navigate around their new workplace, to provide specific health and safety advice for instance or explain how shared equipment works (removing paper jams from the printer perhaps?). Direct links to short 'show me' videos or photos can quickly answer problems or questions and save time for all concerned.

 

As technology becomes transparent – invisible even – we can seamlessly integrate it into our everyday actions, providing valid access to supporting information and guidance. For example, BMW created an intriguing proof of concept video demonstrating how a car mechanic can use heads-up display glasses to guide them through maintenance procedures on a car. The benefits are tremendous as it means a mechanic can service a wider variety of models and handle what are increasingly complex engine systems. It reduces the pressure for "just-in-case" training and emphasises "just-in-time" support. Much of this is not conceptually new. For example I was involved in a similar project in 1992 for Iveco to design a very similar performance support system for truck mechanics which used video to show how to dismantle, fix and reassemble engine systems. What is different is that the technology now is faster, connected, cost-effective, mobile, even wearable.

 

The smartphones and games consoles of today set new precedents for those of us working within learning and development. We can start to break out of the relatively static classroom and design learning support that is location-aware, tapping into shared expertise at the time it has most context and give immediate support on actions taken. This immersive experience is more memorable, actionable and potentially removes the issue of training transfer back into the workplace – there is no need to transfer as you are essentially already there.

 

The design implications are significant and challenge the more structured approach to instruction. Indeed game design offers a powerful motivational model that encourages repeated practice and mastery. Levelling up and achievement systems successfully compel us to try and better ourselves each time. Some of these game environments are becoming incredibly rich and sophisticated, and are hugely effective learning environments, accurately simulating specific real world scenarios.

It is no coincidence that the military, medical and aviation fields are leading in this area given the life and death nature of their respective fields. But as the technology becomes more accessible, this is spilling into other areas such as construction, health and safety, customer service, performance management, contract negotiation and other real-world, complex interactions that many more of us engage in. These simulations don't necessarily have to involve high end 3D graphics and complex artificial intelligence. By using technology to augment the real world around us, we can even more realistically recreate specific situations to test and train responses, working together with the support of other peers and experts, even if they are not physically present alongside us.

 

This is not to say this is entirely for the better. There is always a need for balance and blend. But being able to economically extend our support beyond the natural constraints of the scheduled training event in a classroom can deliver far more effective learning experiences and deliver significant performance improvements to the individual and organisation as a whole.

No pain, more gain? Research supports "less learning more often"

Many years back, I coined a phrase that neatly summarised my view on how to change current training design and delivery practice so that it can dramatically improve effective learning and performance. My phrase?

"Less learning more often" 

(click to read the full article)

Is it happening? Well, it's beginning to it seems. We are clearly recognising that the concentrated, content-heavy course delivery model often fails to transfer effectively to competent performance in the workplace. A new approach that favours little and often, campaign over course, interwoven activities is, counter to many people's current beliefs, far more effective. Not only that, new research at Northwestern University suggests this new way of training could reduce by at least half the effort previously thought necessary to make learning gains.

The research also may be the first behavioral demonstration of meta-plasticity, the idea that experiences that on their own do not generate learning can influence how effective later experiences are at generating learning.

"Prior to our work much of the research into perceptual learning could be summed up as 'no pain, no gain,'" says Beverly Wright, first author of a study in the Sept. 22 Journal of Neuroscience and communication sciences and disorders professor at Northwestern. "Our work suggests that you can have the same gain in learning with substantially less pain."

The Northwestern researchers found that robust learning occurred when they combined periods of practice that alone were too brief to cause learning with periods of mere exposure to perceptual stimuli. "To our surprise, we found that two 'wrongs' actually can make a right when it comes to perceptual learning," says Wright. What's more, they found that the combination led to perceptual learning gains that were equal to the learning gains made by participants who performed twice as much continuous task training (training which by nature of its repetition and length often is onerous).

The findings hold potential for members of the general population with an interest in enhancing perceptual abilities -- for musicians seeking to sharpen their sensitivity to sound, people studying a second language or physicians learning to tell the difference between regular and irregular heartbeats.

This is great news for my me and my son as it means our intuitive, supposedly "lazy" approach to guitar practice, appears to be pretty effective!

 In my own article I referred to some earlier research which supports this further:

Back in 2001, the American Psychological Association published (Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory and Cognition, 2001, Vol. 27, No. 4) some interesting research. It concluded that practicing different skills in concentrated blocks is not the most efficient way to learn. While focusing on a particular skill leads to a short term boost in performance during the period of training, this leads people to over-estimate how well they learned the skill they practiced and results in poorer long term learning. This has the potential to fool trainers and trainees into believing that the apparent progress made during the training will be sustained in future performance back in the job. In fact, for long-term retention, practicing skills that are mixed with other tasks (contextual-interference practice as the researchers call it) results in better learning.

This has far reaching implications for most training design. It clearly points away from focused training on single skills and concentrated repetitive practice and suggests we design learning experiences that are deliberately interwoven among other tasks, requiring people to actively recall and then practice the new skill over longer time intervals.

As we acquire a better understanding of these learning processes perhaps the wider L & D world will be able to bite the bullet and accept that a more fundamental change in approach is needed. And hey, it looks like learning these new ways may be less effort than you first thought.