Dave’s Whiteboard

Clark Quinn wrote about the speed of thought the other day. One of his observations is that business should move at the speed of thought — and that thought actually moves much slower than electrons.

We need to not rush to make decisions, but be willing to allow the time to make a good decision. And that’s contrary to much of management practice and organizational culture. I remember several years ago when we were pushing quite strongly on meta-learning, the push back was that “we don’t have time for reflection�. That has got to change for organizations that want to persist and succeed.

This got me thinking about best practices — or, worse, Best Practices. I hate seeing that phrase with capital letters; they’re a sure sign of trouble (or of sloganeering).

I suppose that best practices sometimes are silver bullets, exactly what an organization needs to overcome some grisly problem.

More often, they’re like those magic beans that Jack traded his cow for. He had no idea what the magic was, and he had no idea where the beanstalk would lead.

As I commented on Clark’s blog, many people act as though the Church of Best Practice is only open on Sundays. They treat the concept as a quick search for something that apparently guaranteed success in another setting. Then they drag it, often against its will, into an alien environment.

I’m not saying you shouldn’t search for people who’ve grappled with problems and one. I believe firmly that good judgment comes from experience and that experience comes from bad judgment. And I also believe it doesn’t have to be your bad judgment.

It’s hard to know in advance if your judgment’s good or not, though. All the more reason to be mindful as you work, and reflective afterward. Pay attention to what you’re doing and to what you’ve done. If you don’t examine what you’ve been doing and how it compares with what you wanted to accomplish, your practice is unlikely to reach the “best” stage.

As Jim Fuller said once, practice without feedback doesn’t make perfect; it just makes permanent.

Or, as it says outside the Church of Best Practice:

Church parking lot photo by lancea / Lance Andrewes

After reading Sharon Begley’s informative book on the brain, I was glad to find her science blog, Lab Notes.

I just read Juiced, her most recent post. She reports on a survey that asked 1,400 scientists whether they had taken drugs reported to boost brain power.

20% said they’d taken one of the drugs in question “for non-medical reasons to boost my concentration, focus, and memory.” Of those,

• 62% said they’d taken Ritalin (prescribed for ADHD)
• 44% said they’d taken Provigil (normally prescribed for sleep disorders; also has “a street reputation for keeping you awake for all-nighters”)
• 15% took beta blockers (prescribed for cardiac arrhythmia but known for an anti-anxiety effect)

Begley says:

My favorite reason [for taking these drugs without having a condition like ADHD]? This one, from a scientist who described him- or herself as over 65:

“As a professional, it is my duty to use my resources to the greatest benefit of humanity. If ‘enhancers’ can contribute to this humane service, it is my duty to do so.�

If you’d like to follow up:

• The post on Nature Network, announcing survey results
  (includes links to downloadable files with the full results).
• Nature News’ summary of the results

Prescription Starbucks photo by quinn.anya / Quinn Dombrowski

In 1986, Donald A. Cook of Human Performance Associates gave a presentation at the Fourth Annual Computer-Based Training Conference in San Diego. I wasn’t there, and I never met Cook, but I’ve kept a third-generation photocopy of his presentation, Learning Principles and CBT Authoring.

For the rest of the post, I’ll let Cook speak for himself [though I may add clarification inside brackets]. You might find something of value yourself, and I may have enough to do more excerpts in another post.

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Some lecture frames [non-interactive screens] are very ‘lectury.’ They crowd a lot of text onto the screen, they use condescending turns of phrase like “of course…”

Most important, the learner doesn’t have to do anything.

The field of CBT presents us with hour upon hour, or mile upon mile of “lecture” or “page-turning” or “text-y” screens…whose only incitement to student interaction is the repeated message: “Press return to continue,” or, sometimes, in a burst of libertarian spirit, “Press any key to continue.”

I have seen a self-styled tutorial accompanying a highly touted software product which could be traversed…by placing a book upon the space bar and walking away.

Authoring systems…will call such frames “information screens”…. Information is good stuff these days. Lectures, on the other hand…have fallen into disrepute. but they are the same thing…

The pattern of a string of lecture frames followed by a batch of questions is not very good. It would be better to begin with the questions… so that the learner’s first exposure to the important material comes after a look at the questions she’ll be held responsible for….

Test items, or as they are sometimes called, criterion frames… may be buried smoothly right in the middle of a teaching sequence…. an important guideline for the development of CBT: write all your criterion frames first, and put them in place — in the order which the learner will encounter them.

[In contrast,] a teaching frame presents a bit of information… and then asks for its application to a specific case…on the same screen. This…[has] the most powerful teaching potential in frame-based CBT….

I have often worked with instructional developers, slowly getting them to see the arbitrary and even crual aspects of telling the learning something on screen one and then testing for it on a later screen. Finally the magic moment comes when I say, “Why don’t you try putting both the information and the question about it on the same screen?”

There is a moment’s pause. Then the answer comes:

“But then, they’d get it right!”

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Okay, this is Dave again. I’m back, because I want to summarize what Cook called a Tolman frame — a basic unit of interaction that includes:

• Presenting information critical to some performance
• Presenting an object for that information
• Requesting a response

Here’s one example:

Gaul is divided into three parts, one of which the Belgae inhabit, the Aquitani another, and the third those whom we call Gauls but who in their own language are called Celts.

How many parts are there to Gaul?

You’ll notice that this is a bad example. The critical processing needed to answer correctly is about two points above plant life. It’s the instructional equivalent of “copy the word three.”

So here’s a better example:

The main tribes in Gaul are the Belgae, the Aquitani, and those whom we call Gauls but who in their own language are called Celts.

How many tribes are there in Gaul?

Notice the difference? The only way to answer correctly is to do something with the information about Gaul. You have to process it. Sure, counting the names of the tribes is a fairly simple process, but this is an example, not an online course about De Bello Gallico.

Desert-trek photo by ecreyes / Ernie R.

One of John Medina’s brain rules is “we don’t pay attention to boring things.” Obvious, in the sense that fire tends to feel hot, but somehow missing as a design principle in a lot of training and education.

I’m working through Merona’s book and have gotten to the chapters on short-term and long-term memory. They’re as good an excuse as any for a side trip to honor a man who once described his goal like this:

 
 
I’d like to take you now on wings of song, as it were, and try and help you forget perhaps for a while your drab, wretched lives. 
 

It’s Tom Lehrer’s 80th birthday. I read once that he has collected newspaper articles discussing his death, though so far as I know he’s still around. For me, and I suspect many other people, his songs on That Was the Week that Was or on his albums moved quickly and permanently into long-term memory.

Three samples to show his range. First, something seasonal:

Then, a trip back to the early 1970s and The Electric Company:

And finally, a link well worth the trip: Mike Stanfill’s Flash animation of “The Elements.”

Happy birthday, Tom.

Art Hutchinson offers a striking example of a disconnect. Speaking at Columbia University, Newsweek editor Jon Meacham asked how many of the students read the magazine.

The answer? None.

Hutchinson’s angle is that Newsweek is not only missing the boat, it may be in the wrong harbor. Meacham was trying to nag the students into becoming readers.

I think I understand Meacham’s frustration. In the world of organizational training and learning, we also have good people. We’re also frustrated. And, in many ways, our business as we’ve known it is tanking.

More than 30 years ago, Mager and Pipe wrote Analyzing Performance Problems and gave it the subtitle You Really Oughta Wanna. They were talking about performance problems — urging trainers and managers to look past “training” and see the larger performance system.

Results have been mixed, though you can hardly blame Mager and Pipe. Sometimes the combination of inertia (the way we’ve trained) and uncertainly (will another way work?) is a powerful barrier to progress.

Even our progress is a barrier. People can and do learn through well-designed courses… so why not seek out better versions of the tools we’ve had all along?

On the other hand, I think of Newsweek and Time as about as relevant as The Saturday Evening Post. Though I’m an avid reader, I get exactly two print magazines — and one’s an annual gift from my parents.

While I think of myself as an eager learner, I haven’t done much learning in formal settings in quite a while. The few cases I can think of in, say, the past 10 years, were essentially intro courses, like learning to use Flash. It was helpful to have a live instructor, and to follow a reasonably organized path through the basics.

But at least 90% of what I learned, I could have learned through a good tutorial combined with practice on my own — including maybe some struggle on my part to figure out what I’d done wrong.

I don’t know what the new world of learning within the organizations is going to look like. Many of them will continue in their hearts to believe in the butts in seats model (however pleasantly labeled). For others, the challenge may be creating and sharing a clear picture of what success on the job looks like — for all kinds of jobs — and then figuring out what tools and what actions best support that.

To paraphrase Hutchinson’s question, what if they launched an LMS and nobody came?

Paddle-in-the-creek photo by jajolll / jack.