Dave’s Whiteboard

Janet Clarey’s post about generational differences touches on learning styles, among other things.  I’ve sometimes called myself a Reform Behaviorist (I agree that there’s something like attitude; I just don’t know how to affect it directly), and so I’m always a bit skeptical about emphasis on style.

So I share Janet’s uncertainty that generational differences necessarily mean much when it comes to designing instruction.  Especially in the context of designing instruction within organizations.

I read recently that if you don’t learn a second language by around age 10, you’ll have a non-native accent.  If you don’t learn it till your midteens, you’ll lack a native speaker’s grasp of grammar and syntax.

I think both those ideas are generally true, though I’m sure exceptions exist.  Yet you can learn another language at any stage of your life, and communicate effectively in that language.  You might have been a more fluent speaker if you’d started sooner, but if your dad had been Zhao Kuangyin, you might have been emperor of China.

My point is that you can design effective instruction to help people acquire worthwhile skills that they don’t currently have.  That instruction doesn’t require learning-style modification (or Myers-Briggs modification), but it probably does require connections to real-life work, practice with realistic problems, useful feedback, availability on (or very close to) demand, active support by management and peers, and similar performance-related factors.

Philip Hutchinson at pipwerks asks and takes a stab at answering the question, “Should We Use eLearning Authoring Tools?”  Here’s the core of his opinion:

Most eLearning tools do not promote the creation of effective courses, do not promote web standards, and do not promote accessibility; they merely make cookie-cutter course development easier for technically inexperienced course developers.

I want to reread the post and think more about it.  My first impression is that good instruction (I’m not sure I can guarantee good learning) comes from a combination of instructional design and web development. 

I do think Philip’s got a good point: a lot of “authoring” templates are the educational equivalent of Hamburger Helper.  Here’s a multiple-guess, here’s an “interactive” drag-and-drop, here’s a great (and obviously highly original) Jeopardy or Millionaire question format.

I think that anyone who’s created training they’re proud of has some example they’d bring to ISD show-and-tell.  Imagine having a collection of those together with suggestions of how to execute them.  Sure, some people would just change the words in the example, the way they fill in the PowerPoint template.  But others can and will generalize from a range of examples and come up with original, engaging interaction.

I commented on this post at Cammy Bean’s Learning Visions the other day, sharing some of my experience working with job aids.

I’m a strong believer in them (and wrote about them here [when to create them] , here [Rossett and Schafer's Job Aids and Performance Support], and here [a job aid for taking your prescription]).

After my virtual conversation with Cammy, I was reminded of one of the great instructional design truths:

If you know enough about a set of tasks to create effective training, you know enough to develop job aids for those tasks. 

In fact, you can’t develop effective training if you haven’t done enough analysis to develop job aids.

That’s not to say you always develop job aids or performance support.  (Insert the usual skill-and-knowledge-only stuff here.)  What I am saying is:

• If you know you have skill and knowledge gaps, you must have data on the desired performance, the actual performance, the standards, etc.
• If you know that, then you know details like when to perform, how often, consequence of error, and so on.
• And if you know that, then the tasks themselves are telling you whether they’re suited to job aids.

Let’s say the job is to help the unpaid treasurer of a volunteer organization manage the group’s finances through QuickBooks Online Edition.  The treasurer has never used the software, so we have a definite skill/knowledge gap.

My own task analysis would start with an outcome analysis: what are the desired results?  Accurate and timely reports, accurate and timely entry of income, accurate recording of expenses…

Clearly I could create a training class for this stuff (meaning, to attempt to encode it in memory).  For such a class, though, I have to figure out all the steps that lead to those accomplishments.

Which means that I’ll know enough to identify the steps/tasks I can cover entirely with job aids, and steps/tasks for which I can combine job aids and training. 

Job aids often appear as step-by-step guides, flowcharts, and decision tables, but as the Rosset/Schafer book demostrates, they can take many other forms.  Imagine a well-designed cascading style sheet with call-out boxes.  It can embody the major components of a CSS, helping someone create a new one without having to dig the code out of a reference book.  (The reference book is a job aid for recalling the requirements and options for an entire body of code.)

If you’re designing instruction, don’t overlook the high payoff that comes from providing job aids.  (To say nothing of the intangible but very real value of not boring people by trying to make them memorize stuff they don’t need to memorize.)

The Washington Post reports on a study which contends that “most diversity training efforts at American companies are ineffective and even counterproductive.”

The article estimates that U.S. businesses spend $200 million to $300 million a year on diversity training. I can’t help thinking that the same tough analysis goes into justifying this effect as goes into, say, figuring out bonuses for CEOs.

Alexandra Kalev of the U. of Arizona led a review of 31 years’ worth of data from over 800 companies. Says the Post article:

…The analysis did not find that all diversity training is useless. Rather, it showed that mandatory programs — often undertaken mainly with an eye to avoiding liability in discrimination lawsuits — were the problem. When diversity training is voluntary and undertaken to advance a company’s business goals, it was associated with increased diversity in management.

Or, as Daniel Patrick Moynihan once remarked, “Everyone is entitled to their own opinion, but not their own facts.”

Kalev and her colleagues found that the best programs focused not on attitudes but on organizational skills — like establishing mentoring relationships, or giving women and minorities to take on high-profile roles.

I found an earlier study by Kalev and colleagues, Cracking the Glass Cages? Work Teams, Cross-Training and Management Diversity (this link is to a draft; the final version appeared in the American Journal of Sociology). One conclusion is that movement away from traditional hierarchical job structures — e.g., to self-directed work teams and to job-rotation programs — leads to increased gender and racial diversity in management.

Although he wrote about it last month, I didn’t see Dick Carlson’s highlighting of a virtual hip replacement operation until today.

It’s one of many resources at Edheads, which looks to be a real asset for teachers.  I dove right into the Flash simulation.  It starts a bit leisurely, but then, I’m not in the target audience of 7th through 12th graders.

At first I thought the interactions were a bit obvious, and when I tried making my incisions in the wrong place, nothing bad happened to the patient.  But putting the lesson in context — demonstrating for children how hips get replaced — I thought it did a solid job.  Make the incision, stop the bleeding, retract the muscles, all using believable animation which avoids the overrich detail you’d have with video of actual surgery.

And avoids the expense, too…