Stand up to one

There's a lot of fear going around these days, and with it, a lot of fear-mongering.

Yesterday, I posted this on Facebook:

At the risk of inciting the ire of the Internet, here are some truths. Daesh (ISIS) are already in the US; there's not enough security or shoe screenings in the world to keep them out. Worse, we are bombarded with terrorism from our own citizens daily: school shootings, church bombings, people gunned down while sitting in a movie theater. We don't have the systems and controls in place to secure ourselves from ourselves, let alone from some unknown villain. People love to point fingers at others, to blame other people. It's easy to blame someone else. It's so easy to fall back on fear and hate to guide decisions.

Choose love instead. There are people suffering; we should help them. That is what good people do; they look violence and hatred in the eye and meet it with love, compassion and kindness. Those are the heroes, those are the free, those are the brave. That is how we win. We stop building walls and boundaries and we reach out our hands in peace. We take loving action. It's not enough to change your profile pic or post articles of support on social media. Open your hearts, open your homes and help those in need in real, tangible ways.

There will still be violence in the world. Innocent people may be hurt or killed. We may not change every heart filled with hate. The best we can do is try to overpower it with love and lead by example. The best way to win is to represent the opposite of the hatred and violence; be stronger and more powerful in our resolve to not give in to what terrorists ultimately want to create: a culture of fear and hate that they have created, in which they hold the power. The best way to win is with love.

Yesterday evening, I saw this posted on Twitter, and responded: 

Evidently, Dr. Scipioni didn't like to have his data challenged, because here were his subsequent tweets: 

So, because I cited a source with a different number of homeless veterans, I subscribe to a "that can't be" philosophy. I have pre-programmed beliefs. I am sub-literate. A pot-stirrer. A rabble-rouser. 

I actually found a few sources to back up my data. Here they are: 

http://www.endhomelessness.org/pages/veterans

http://nchv.org/index.php/news/media/background_and_statistics/

https://www.hudexchange.info/resources/documents/2014-AHAR-Part1.pdf

I haven't found any sources that would bring the average number of homeless veterans on any given night to 3.2 million. So far, Dr. Scipioni hasn't provided any. I am happy to be proven wrong if anyone can provide me with data to support his claim. 

If, however, that data doesn't exist, why am I being called names for pointing it out? Why am I being personally attacked and called names? Why are assumptions being made about who I am? 

This is why social media is such a toxic place: the name-calling, the bullying, the threats are allowed to happen. Misinformation is spread without anyone fact-checking, and those who try to hold people accountable to data are attacked.

Why do we allow people to behave in this way? Why do we allow this type of behavior? Aren't there more of us that can keep our conversations civil even when we disagree? I committed the grievous act of challenging uncited data and somehow I'm the problem? 

No, Dr. Scipioni. You are. 

If someone you worked with behaved this way, they would be fired. If your kid talked to you this way, they'd be grounded. But on social media, we allow it. And it's ruining it for everyone. Aren't there more of us than there are of them? Can't we stand up and say "this is not ok"? 

The truth is, Dr. Scipioni could have responded with a citation of the source of his data. He didn't. He could have said, "Oh, my bad. Still, 50k is too many." And I'd agree. He could have just ignored me. But he responded with an attack and an assumption that I don't have the right to respectfully challenge his words. I believe that I do have that right. I believe we all have that right. 

So today, I call on each of you. Those of us that believe in civil discourse, even when we disagree. Those of us who love social media and don't want our spaces filled with vitriol and attacks. Those of us who want to make decisions and form opinions based off of accurate information. Those of us who are sick of being called names for standing up to mis-information. Stand up to one person. Say that it's not ok. Stand up with love to the personal attacks. Stand up to name calling. Stand up for the truth, and be willing to do the work to back it up, and be willing to be wrong. But stand up to those who don't want us to question, don't want us to challenge them. 

When we stop challenging each other, we all lose. Don't let intelligent discourse die because a vocal minority doesn't want to participate. 

Stand up to one person today. Let me know how it goes. 

If it can be measured, it can be valued

Training is often viewed as a cost by companies and therefore is on the chopping block when costs need to be cut. Much like the arts in K12 education, training is seen as a "nice to have," but not a core function of the organization.

Why is training viewed as a cost and not a strategic investment? Because learning professionals don't measure the impact of training on the performance of the organization.

Think about the last time you delivered a training program in an organization. Or the last time you participated in training, if you aren't an L&D professional. How was the success of the training measured? 

How many completed the training?

A passing score on an assessment? 

A subjective "smile sheet" ranking where learners reported how valuable they thought the training was?

Do these training programs measure improvements in employee performance? Decreased time to market/increased productivity? Customer satisfaction ratings? Increased revenue? Reduction in costs? Increased employee retention?

No? WHY NOT?

If training is a strategic investment, then it is absolutely critical that we show the value of the investment. Attendance is not value; increased sales is. Assessment scores are meaningless if people don't perform their jobs better. 

If our role in an organization is to improve performance, then shouldn't we be measuring performance? 

Only when we start measuring the right things will training be valued. 

Because video games: games, flow and the evolution of our brains

The summer between 5th and 6th grade, having just moved to a new town in northern Michigan after the school year ended and thus not knowing anyone yet, I found a passion that still fuels me: video games. We had an Atari 2600 and while my sister roamed our new neighborhood to make friends, I settled in to beat Pac-Man. I played for hours and hours, until I got so good at avoiding ghosts and eating fruit that I rolled the scoreboard.

My mom eventually kicked me out of the house to go find my sister and play. She coined the term "mush brain" and continued to repeat the same refrain, even as I moved on to Frogger and Pitfall and eventually to Centipede, from which I still have the remnants of callouses from the rollerball controller.

That phrase, mush brain, never made sense to me, as I knew that counter to what my mom might have seen as me zoning out, I was actually concentrating REALLY HARD. I didn't want to be disturbed, not because I was catatonic, but because I was intensely focused.

Fast forward 25 years, as my 9 year old son is standing in the middle of my living room, a Wii controller in each hand, focused so completely on Punch Out (which had been my birthday gift, fwiw) that he doesn't hear us telling him it's time for dinner. My mom called him a mush brain. I stopped her and said, "No, look. Watch him. He's solving the pattern for each boxer. He's concentrating. He's doing hard work."

I happened upon a conversation on a friend's Facebook page today, where he reflected on the damage that video games cause to how our brains function. I flashed back to my own experiences as a kid, and to watching my kids now. Maybe video games DO change the way our brains work, but I think it's for the better. Video games are enormous feedback experiences where each move you make has a consequence - an increase in score, a goal accomplished or failed and, of course, game over. Games teach us to practice, to keep trying, to fail and have another go. Games teach us persistence. Games teach us problem solving, logic, complex decision-making and pattern recognition. Video games improve our fine motor skills. Collaborative games teach team work, communication skills and leadership skills. And beyond all of that...games might be our first experience of flow, that deeply focused attention that some might dismiss as mindlessness rather than mindfulness.

And yet, so many people jumped on the "anti-video game" band wagon in the comments. It's so easy to vilify, to oversimplify the evolution of our brains due to the influences of technology and to ignore the actual research that disproves your opinion. It's so easy. "Games are bad." It is so easy to point fingers and cite circumstantial evidence to counter honest to goodness research and data that shows the benefits of games. This is no means unique to games; we see the same arguments against gun control, feminism, climate change...debates where research shows clear data but passionate opinion somehow gets weighted equally.

Examples of games research to check out:

Karl Kapp's answer to the question (with research!) of "do games teach?" 

An article in Psychology Today on benefits of playing video games 

The educational benefits of video games (written by a professor who studies gambling addiction)

Video games for training surgeons

Just to name a few...and a few resources on flow to check out if you're interested:

Game Design Theory Applied to the Flow Channel 

Wikipedia reference on Flow

I don't have a real picture of us playing, but this is how I imagine me and my son.

Let me be clear: I don't think kids should be playing violent first person shooters. Video game ratings systems are there for a reason and while I tend to focus on the positive impacts of video games, if you're letting your kid watch Game of Thrones or play Call of Duty? Yeah, there are going to be negative impacts. There's plenty of research on the impacts of exposure to violence in video games (and other media forms) on children, as well as the danger of video game addiction. Two points here: Too much of ANYTHING is bad for you, especially for children. And correlation does not equal causation. While there have been lots of correlations drawn between playing violent video games and violent behavior, there is no causal evidence (meaning that playing video games does not cause you to be violent).
Let's be smart out there, people...but let's not throw out the baby with the bath water.

When I worry about how our brains are changing, I think about how we're less likely to engage in deep reading and reflection. I think about how attention spans have shortened, likely because of television commercial cycles and mobile content. I worry about how difficult it is for our brains to discern meaning with the endless stream of information, opinions and misinformation that is broadcast to us through multiple media channels all day long.

I don't worry about video games. Video games have taught me how to fail, pick myself up and try again. They have strengthened my focus and concentration. And my son who conquered Punch Out with focused concentration on pattern recognition? He just won Santa Barbara's Math Super Bowl for 6th grade with a perfect 50/50. So much for being a mush brain.

TMI

I'm on a panel tonight on information overload at an event for the Association for Women Communications in Santa Barbara. A few days ago, we held a quick "panel prep" meeting, and as I listened to the other women on the panel describe their professional focus on helping people manage not just information overload, but finding balance in their busy lives, I couldn't help but feel more like one of their typical customers and less like someone qualified to share the stage with them.  Six kids, full time job, my book just out...I could use some expert advice on information overload!

I've been reflecting on how I manage my life, my engagement with social media and my interest in technology. I don't think I've ever really thought about it, but I have implemented some strategies to keep me sane. I'll be talking about these tonight, but as I'm preparing for the panel, I thought it might be useful to capture some of the ways I find balance and how I've learned to manage too much information.

1. I don't watch TV.
Seriously, we don't even usually have the television on in my house, and if we do, it's usually one of the kids watching something on Netflix. I don't have the news streaming in the background, I don't have a television in my bedroom (an neither do any of our kids), and if there is a tv show that I want to watch, we watch it streaming online. I haven't watched tv for years, and I have to say, I haven't missed it.

2. I have a separate Twitter account for news.
I don't think it's unusual for people to have multiple Twitter accounts, but I have two: one for news monitoring, and one for everything else. If I want to know what's going on in the world, I check my news account and monitor the feed. I could also use Tweetdeck or another filtering tool for this, but I have found that having a separate account is easier for me to manage, and allows me to moderate what information I take in, when.

3. I don't use a computer at night.
I do use my phone and iPad, but I have found that they are much easier for me to put down. I also typically use my mobile devices for playing games at night, if I use them at all, so I don't usually take in new information while I'm using them. I find that when I'm on my computer, I tend to spend more time at night working, when I really need to disconnect and rest. This policy also allows me to honor my next strategy...

4. The evening is for family.
I spend most of my day on my computer. From the time I get home until the kids go to bed, my time is focused on them. There were many years, especially when I first started my company, that I never turned off my computer, never stopped working. It was brutal and impacted everyone in my family. Over time, I've learned to separate my work time from my family time. It has made a huge impact on me, and has made the time I do spend working more productive, because I'm always working against self-imposed deadlines.

5. If I'm feeling overwhelmed, I go to the beach.
I'm lucky; I can walk to the beach from my house, so when I get that overwhelmed feeling, off I go. The beach may be it for me now, but in the past, taking a bath, working on a creative project, or playing a game were all ways I could decompress. Everyone has something that takes them from hectic to calm; find yours and use it liberally.

6. Understanding the value I get from social media.
Facebook and Twitter go on, and are no worse off when I take a break. Stepping away sometimes actually gives me more perspective on what value social media brings to me. It helps me set boundaries and "rules" for what information I subject myself to and when I open those gates. Sometimes when I see the negative stuff, I have to remember that 1. I have a choice of what information I allow in, and 2. People who are negative and hurtful through social media are likely also that way in real life. If I wouldn't have a drink with them in real life, why would I "hang out" with them through social media? Block, unfriend and unfollow are great curation tools for TMI.

7. Quiet and focused energy.
Yoga is my friend. A brisk walk or workout is an active way to clear the clutter in my head, but taking a few minutes to meditate can also help me refocus. They both really do the same thing for me: extract me from the information stream and help me focus on my health, energy and what's really important.

I'm sure I've employed other strategies that aren't coming to mind, and I'm also sure that you all have even better tips and advice to share. Please add your own information overload strategies in the comments, and I'll share them with the panel tonight!

DevLearn 2013 Lessons Learned

I'm a notoriously bad note-taker (I blame it on paying attention), but coming out of DevLearn this year, I had some big epiphanies that I wanted to get down in writing.

First, thank you, as always, to the e-Learning Guild for hosting a wonderful event. Every year I say I'm going to present less and attend more sessions, and every year my dance card fills up. David Holcombe, Heidi Fisk, David Kelly, Reuben Tozman - another inspiring year! And a special thanks to Juli Balding, who is the world's best herder of cats.

In no particular order, my thoughts and observations on DevLearn 2013:

1. People have a hard time breaking out of "conference mode" - I would have liked to see more people building Lego robots. Maybe next year I can convince them to have a "Battle Bot" competition during DemoFest and bring in a Battle Bot alumni to host (ironically, I know one...). In general, I like the hands on learning activities, but I think it's difficult to get people to transition from soaking it all in to trying something new. Still...I think this is worth broadening and refining - and could evolve into a real application at a conference of immersive learning.

2. I wanted more diversity in the keynotes.

3. I didn't have to explain what immersive learning was so much anymore. I had GREAT turn outs at my pre-con workshop and Morning Buzz sessions. I like seeing the shift from "ooh shiny" technology focus to "what can we really do with this," and not in a dismissive way.

4. The data sessions were packed, and it's clear that many people still don't know what or how to measure. What the LMSs typically measure and track aren't the metrics that executives care about and that is a serious gap we need to bridge. A few years ago, I did a panel with Cammy Bean and Ellen Wagner at Learning Solutions on speaking the language of the business. We need that BIG TIME in data analytics. I want to show more examples. I want to break down a PNL for training professionals to really get what we need to communicate. I already have ideas on how to refine my session. Maybe there's a book in there.

5. There seemed like a lot less higher ed and government attendees. I like seeing a good mix, but all of my sessions were heavy on the enterprise attendees. I'd love to see more diversity, not less!

6. I worry about the new tech hype. As the girl who touted virtual worlds a few years back, I am seeing parallels in some of the new technologies. Augmented reality hasn't found it's home yet. Mobile is still struggling with good design practices. Games are finally accepted as valuable, but still there are so few examples of organizations implementing them in deep ways...still a lot of pilot tests. And now we have AI and robots and Google Glass and sensors...and yet many are still struggling to show how training adds value (and is not just a cost center) to an organization. Which, of course, takes me back to analytics...we need to keep the horse in front of the cart, and while I'm a huge fan of new tech, I worry that we need to catch up to where tech was 3 years ago. (Am I getting old and jaded?)

7. I was thrilled to get to hear Ian Bogost's keynote and even more excited that he delineated games from gamification. It's a message that learning folks need to hear, and he really broke it down well. I hope it helped some of that "let's make this boring activity a game" syndrome. Plus, I fan-girled out a little that he recognized me.

8. I've been talking about ARGs for 5 years and people still don't really know what they are. Part of it lies in the confusion of games versus gamification, but I'd like to really push more examples and case studies. It's a low cost way to create immersive learning that is completely under-leveraged. It may be time to jump back in to that pool.

9. Don't get a tattoo in Vegas when you live an hour from LA. Especially if you already got a tattoo in Vegas last year.

10. People are sheep. NO ONE would enter the Silver Clouds exhibit at the Andy Warhol exhibit at the Bellagio, even after John and I stormed in. Why would you not experience the art? Jump into it, people. JUMP. IN.

11. Every conference I go to, I think about the difference in value of presentations versus conversations.  Presentations are valuable, but it's usually the conversations where we learn the most. What would it look like to structure sessions around conversations with the goal of an outcome. Something like, "I need help with..." and "I can help with...!" and pair people up? Maybe we need problem - solution speed dating?

12. I didn't get as much social time this year. I think that's ok, but I do like to stay for the whole conference, which I couldn't do this year. There's always next year, right?

13. Smart people I admire take lots of good conference notes, or compile peoples' tweets, etc. You should check out Cammy Bean's blog for notes on the sessions she attended (including one of mine, and Ian Bogost's previously mentioned keynote). And David Kelly's compilation of the conference back channel, of course.

14. People really do love lynda.com. I can't tell you how many people stopped me to tell me their personal stories, and thank me for what lynda.com has done for them. It really makes me proud to represent a company that people feel so passionately about.

A few more thought-provoking conversations will be covered in separate blog posts, but my key take-away from DevLearn 2013? It's still all about the design, and the data, not the tech. We just need to figure out design and data FOR the tech. 

Your success metrics aren't unique (or, why are we making analytics so hard?)

Last week I had the pleasure of attending TechKnowledge 2013, including giving a workshop on game design with Karl Kapp and presenting a concurrent session on immersive design. Two action-packed days in San Jose, for sure, and for once I got to see some of my esteemed colleagues' presentations as well.

I was most excited to see Ellen Wagner present on learning analytics and get a sneak peek into some of the work that she's been doing with the Gates Foundation. I was not disappointed; I loved hearing Ellen's practical advice to the packed room on how to approach analytics and not be intimidated by big data and the necessity of quantifying learning...or improvement, really...for our non-learning business colleagues. I appreciated her encouraging us to be able to frame the value that we bring to the organization in business terms without abandoning our expertise that qualifies us to take on an important organizational leadership role.

Watching Ellen's presentation left me thinking (which is normally a very good or very dangerous thing).

Every presentation that I've seen on analytics and big data end with the same call to action: "now, go back to your organization and figure out what you should be measuring."

Photo by WH "Snowflake" Bentley

Here's my challenge to you, my esteemed learning colleagues: shouldn't we all be measuring (basically) the same thing? We all suffer from the snowflake syndrome (I'm just like everyone else! I'm unique!), but to be fair, both statements are true. The real question is how much are we alike and how much are we different?

About ten years ago, I was working with a gentleman who had done an in-depth analysis across 15+ pharmaceutical companies, looking at what made their sales representatives successful. He found that 80% of the success indicators were exactly the same across all companies. The unique 20% related to the type of product, the therapeutic market the drug was being sold into, and the corporate culture differences among the companies.

Now, if you're a pharmaceutical company, where do you spend your analysis energy, knowing this? Right. Don't worry about identifying success markers for the 80%: use the identified metrics, provide training and support for those areas, and spend your analysis time identifying what the other 20% are that are unique to your company. EVERYONE should be measuring that 80%...that's baseline. Figuring out the 20% is what differentiates you from your competitors and supports your brand.

Could the same analysis be achieved for call center support? Project managers? Database engineers? Are there consistent success metrics that are common across industries?

If we could identify the success metrics across within or across industries, we wouldn't have to start from scratch to determine our analytics. We SHOULDN'T have to start from scratch. Don't we know what these things are? Can't we say, "Hey, you want to measure your organizations' success and performance improvement? Here is 80% of what you should be looking at, and what it means. Now, figuring out the 20% that's unique to your organization is up to you." (I'm not saying that it's literally 80% for every job function or every industry...but you get the idea.)

As learning professionals, we should know these benchmarks for our industries. If we don't, that is our very first starting point: find the "80%." What makes us the same? What makes us unique? Identify it, benchmark it, measure it. Then? Spend your time analyzing what makes you better than that 80%.

Competencies as achievements in the game of life

As another follow up to my participation at TechKnowledge this year, I tackled some big ol' buzz words today on the Ayogo blog: learning experiences, activity streams, and game mechanics. 

My brain works at intersections and these are three major concepts that seem to be moving towards a perhaps inevitable conclusion: technology already exists to build personalized curriculum, but the challenge is, can we DESIGN to support it? 

Looking forward to your thoughts...and more panel discussions with my co-conspirators, Aaron Silvers and Reuben Tozman. 

The magic of attention and focus

Last week I attended and spoke at ASTD's TechKnowledge in Las Vegas, sitting on two panels: gamification, and learning experience design and activity streams. (If you just read that and thought "I have no idea what she's talking about," you're not alone...I'll be blogging about those topics in more detail soon.)

Yes, Teller speaks

For once, though, I actually did something in Vegas that wasn't conference related: I went to see Penn & Teller. A group of us all coordinated before the conference to get a block of tickets in the VIP section, which put us in prime position to be part of the show. If you haven't ever seen Penn & Teller, they involve the audience in many of their acts and often pull people up on stage. We must have been primed for magic, because four of us were selected at various points to assist with the show.

And I got to go up on stage for one of the acts.

About halfway through the show, Penn came into the audience, looked at me and asked, "do you wear contacts?" Now, you don't get pulled on stage at any magic show and think that it's going to be uneventful, but particularly at a Penn & Teller show, you know they are going to mess with you. Add to that, as I'm walking up on stage, that Penn is explaining to the audience that the trick they are about to perform is going to happen IN MY MIND. And the entire audience is going to get to watch. Great.

I wish I had video of what the audience could see as I was on stage, but for obvious reasons, Penn & Teller don't allow video or photography. So I'll describe to you what was going on in my mind...where all the magic happened.

When I got on stage, Penn told me to stand on an X in the middle of the stage. The auditorium lights dimmed and a REALLY BRIGHT spotlight was pointed directly at me, which meant that I couldn't see the audience at all and created a very surreal sensation of being alone with Penn & Teller on stage. Even if I was afraid of being on stage in front of a large audience (obviously I'm not), this simple lighting adjustment took the audience completely out of my attention.

Penn started telling me, and the audience, what was going to happen. He spoke fast, and if you've heard Penn Jillette speak, you know he has a deep, booming voice. He said that he was going to give me a series of commands, and that he would be asking me to open and close my eyes. When I closed my eyes, he and Teller would be placing their fingers on my eyelids (the reason why me not wearing contacts was important) and that they would also be touching my arms, my shoulders, etc. Then Penn started giving me instructions, saying my name with every command.

Penn not only has a commanding voice,
but an impressive presence (and one cool nail)

"Koreen, I want you to hold out your hands and we're going to hold your wrists. Hold on to this ring with both hands like its a steering wheel. Close your eyes, Koreen (they put their fingers on my eyelids). Visualize the ring in your hands. Listen to my voice, Koreen. See the map in your mind of where I am based on my voice. Now, Koreen, take the ring and place it over my head (I did).

And on and on it went. Opening my eyes, closing my eyes. Holding the ring, visualizing the ring. Feeling them touching my arms and shoulders. Following their instructions. Penn holding my attention on his words by saying my name over and over. At some point, I knew that it was Teller that had his fingertips on both of my eyelids. It didn't matter; my brain was focused, trying to follow directions and not embarrass myself in front of the audience that I knew was there but I couldn't see. The main "trick" was that the ring would move from not feeling like it was around my arm to "magically" hanging from around my arm.

Yes, as I was standing there up on stage, it felt like magic. My mind couldn't comprehend, with the limited data set that I had (mostly tactile), how the ring went from being in my hands or on top of my arm, to being around my arm. I didn't have a severed limb and I didn't feel the ring go through, so...it was magic. I did "get" some of what they were doing that the audience could see but I couldn't. I knew that Teller was doing most of the touching and Penn was constantly keeping my auditory attention. Honestly, it was all I could do to keep up.

The best/worst part, and no one had this information but me, was at one point, Penn told me to do something with my left hand while my eyes were closed. I realize that for most people, this would be no big deal, but I have evidently grown up with the absolute inability to remember which is my right or left hand without making the 'L' with my forefinger and thumb. When Penn said the command, I literally had a moment of panic that I didn't know which hand was my left, that I was going to use the wrong hand and mess up the trick and embarrass myself on stage. Luckily, 50/50 odds are pretty decent for Vegas and I picked the correct left.

Then it was over, the rings magically around my arms, not, then again. As I walked off the stage and back to my seat, my mind was reeling with every moment of the experience: what did I see, hear, feel...what did I know? I knew the audience had seen the "trick," but it didn't matter...all the magic HAD happened in my mind.

I have no idea where I originally heard the phrase "perception shapes reality" but its what I kept coming back to as I deconstructed my 5 minutes as a magic act assistant. For me, despite what was really happening on stage, my mind was processing the experience from the data that was available to me. My perception was that the rings suddenly appearing around my arms was magic. I had no other explanation and my mind couldn't piece together other alternatives in the time that I was on stage. From the perception of the audience, however, I had just been fooled into thinking it was magic. It was clear to me that there was a lot more going on than I knew about and the rings around my arms weren't there by magic; it was only through the strategic filtering of information to me did that become my perception.

Someone asked me after the show if I knew what was going on. Did I know that they were limiting information to me to make me believe something that wasn't true? Yes. Did I know at certain instances that Teller was touching me to distract me and Penn kept saying my name and giving me instructions to keep me focused on the things he wanted to focus my attention on so that I wouldn't pay attention to other things? Yes. Did I know that I was the only one in the room that didn't know the truth? Yes.

So why didn't I say anything? Why didn't I question? Why didn't I call them out?

I didn't want to ruin the trick, for me or for the audience. I wanted to feel the magic, even though I knew it wasn't real. I wanted that sensation of experiencing the wondrous, the unbelievable. I was motivated to play along because I knew that I would learn more through my suspension of disbelief. I was curious to see what happened if I played along.

So what has this taught me about immersive learning?

• Be honest with your audience, even when you're going to mess with their beliefs. If they know what they are getting into, they are more likely to trust the process. 
• Yes, people's perception shapes their reality. I got a crash course in how limiting your data skews your ability to come to the best, most logical, conclusion. 
• You learn more from the process than the outcome. Even when I found out later there were two rings, it didn't matter. The experience taught me about myself and was more important, ultimately, than the mechanics of the trick.
• Our brains are magical, but they have their limitations. We're just not built to handle multiple stimuli at the same time and so we start practicing selective attention. As learning designers, we sometimes use terms like "cognitive overhead" or "seductive augmentation." These are fancy ways of saying, stop distracting people from the important stuff with attention-sucking stuff that isn't important. Our attention is valuable, design to keep it focused where it should be. 
• Sometimes people WANT to believe the lie. Yep, I knew they were tricking me. It didn't matter. I wanted to be tricked. 

I had seen Penn & Teller before, when I was in college. Twenty years later, they are still amazing. After the show, they hang out in the lobby, signing autographs and posing for pictures. Teller paid me an amazing compliment (yes, he speaks!) and Penn greeted me by name. It seems that attention thing works both ways. 

Ignorance is bliss, knowledge is power & the fear of hypocrisy

First post of the new year, and I'm not starting out lightly...

Earlier this week, my friend Brian McGowan posted this tweet:

I spend a lot of time thinking about behavioral change, organizational change and performance improvement as an immersive learning designer, and lately even more than usual as I finish my book. We even designed a game on personal resilience in The Change Game. Suffice it to say, expertise in change and resistance is required for what I do every day.

I just never considered fear of hypocrisy as a motivation for intentional ignorance.

Some people might call it self deception, or denial...but those things are different. Those labels refer to people who actually know something but convince themselves that what they know isn't true. There are a number of reasons why someone would deny something they know to be true and not being a psychologist, I'm not going to examine those motivations. While self deception might be interesting to explore as an obstacle to change, I'm more interested as to why someone would intentionally choose not to collect the information they should have to make an informed decision.

Brian's tweet, and the subsequent exchange with Julie Dirksen, got me thinking about what that decision-making process might look like. As a rough pass, I've flowcharted it here:

I'll walk you through my logic...

If you have a question, you have a choice: seek the answer to the question or don't. I won't get into the validity of different data sources...let's just assume that you have a limited set of resources to pull data from and getting informed means that you look at all of them, and staying ignorant means that you don't look at all of them (ignorance then can refer to collecting data from only one, or a known biased, source).

After you decide to research the answer to your question, or not, you have a choice: change what I'm doing, or stay the course. Either way, there's a chance that you will succeed and a chance that you will fail. For the sake of this discussion, I'm also not going to explore the likelihood of success or failure based on your level of being informed versus ignorant...there is probably data out there that shows a higher likelihood that you will be successful if you're informed, but I'm focusing more on motivation and perception here, not the actual validity of the decision.

Whether you decide to change or not change, if you made an informed decision and are successful, your perception will justify your motivation to make an informed decision: knowledge is power. If you decide to change while remaining ignorant and are successful, you'll likely think of yourself as lucky, or perhaps even credit your own intuition or intelligence on making the "right" decision, which would reinforce risk-taking behavior. If you decide not to change and are successful, then you'll also likely credit your own intuition and intelligence, but instead of reinforcing risk-taking, you're reinforcing resistance to change.

So, what if you fail? Here's where I think things get interesting. If you change and fail, and if you were informed, you might blame bad data on the decision to change. You might also blame things like lack of experience, lack of knowledge on how to operate in the new environment, or not anticipating the full impact of the change...in other words, you'll likely think that you weren't informed enough. The same rationale holds true for the decision to not change that results in failure, but with a twist...if I was informed and decided not to change, was it because the data told me not to change or was it because I ignored the data that informed me I should change? And if I knew that I should change, and I didn't, does that make me a hypocrite?

But, if you fail, and you were ignorant? You can default to "I didn't know!" Informed failure requires the person to take responsibility for the outcome; ignorant failure allows the person to divert responsibility.

Organizationally, and in regards to learning innovation specifically, I hear a lot of objections to exploring new design strategies that sound like "our people aren't technology savvy" or "we don't have the money for those types of initiatives" or "our company isn't ready for that." But are you sure? I'm guessing your people are much more technology savvy than you think, that "these types of initiatives" are a lot less expensive than you imagine, and that while your company may not be ready for change, companies that don't change don't succeed.

On a personal note, it takes a certain type of emotional fortitude to deal with the data that research may turn up, and some people, and some organizations, truly don't want to have to face the decision to change. As part of the Twitter conversation with Brian and Julie, Julie shared a link to an article on self-deception, and research was shared out that showed "ignorance is bliss," that people who remain ignorant are happier. I don't disagree with that; shirking the responsibility of knowledge puts you in a childlike position of letting others make the informed decisions for you. There are lots of times I'd love to "not know"...how much work there is to be done to fix broken systems, how much injustice exists in the world, how many problems there are to tackle, big and small. I'm sure life would be easier and I'd get more sleep.

But then I read a comment on the Noam Chomsky interview on self-deception and I believe the same  applies to intentional ignorance. Choosing to be uninformed is bigger than just displacing responsibility of action; deciding to be ignorant defines who you are, either as an individual, as an organization, or as a society. The brackets are my addition, with apologies to Richard for applying his thoughts to a different, but related, topic:

RichardSabi

It is interesting that people respond with indignation to the idea of liars {the ignorant} being happier. Some commentators said it was obviously not the case.

Ah, for me the question is rather, what is the pay off for living without self deception {ignorance}?

Could it be self-respect, the ability to appreciate beauty even in a flawed world, resiliency and fortitude, and dare I say it, spiritual maturity?

May. 07 2011 04:52 PM

I do believe that knowledge is power and with great power comes great responsibility (attribution to Voltaire and Stan Lee). While it may not make us happier to be informed, I believe it makes us better. Fear of hypocrisy is a poor excuse for remaining ignorant; better to resolve yourself to informed action than remain in the dark. An informed society is a higher functioning society, an informed organization is a higher performing organization, and an informed person is a more responsible decision-maker.

In 2012, may you be better informed and ready for the changes ahead, because there are always changes ahead...

You can't measure learning, but you can measure behavior

I'm overstating it a bit with the title of this post, because sure, you can measure knowledge acquisition by pre-testing and post-testing, or iterative assessment. I know, I know...we can measure how much someone knows because we have standardized tests! (I really hope the sarcasm is evident in text...)

I spent the last three days at the mHealth Summit in Washington, DC and 19 hours manning the Ayogo booth, talking to amazingly interesting people about the potential of games to improve health outcomes. What mattered to everyone? It wasn't what people know...amazingly, most everyone actually knows what they need to do to be healthier. The challenge is to get people to actually DO those healthy things that will help them better manage their diabetes, reduce their risk for cardiovascular disease, etc.

When it comes to health, but really when it comes to ANYTHING, there is a knowing-doing gap. We all know this...so then why are we as a learning profession settling for assessing knowing? Knowing is not doing. The proof is in the behavior, and behavior can be easily measured.

We live in an age where everything we do is tracked. Do you carry a cell phone? Your wireless carrier knows where you take that phone all day, every day. Do you use a credit card or bank card? All of your purchases are tracked. Do you log onto the Internet? Every site that you visit is logged and recorded (yeah...I know...you delete the history. That just means your kids won't see those sites your visiting...but your Internet service provider still knows).

All of that data, and more...everything you post on Facebook, Twitter...everything you email...anything you do is trackable now. And more ways to track behavior are being created every day...sleep monitors, pedometers, glucose monitors...there is data EVERYWHERE and its all about you. And me. And the guy sitting in traffic next to you who's using his gps.

With all of this data, we can start making predictions about future outcomes. We can target specific communities or subsets of employees, populations, learners. We can provide information to the most relevant audiences in the most appropriate places.

As learning professionals, we should be thinking more closely about the implications of that data and what it means to know so much about a person's current status and the implications for her future status. Can we change the future? Why yes...yes we can. We can observe current behaviors, predict future outcomes, and use our expertise in learning and performance improvement to change behavior to improve those future outcomes.

We have access to so much behavioral data. How do we get people to change their behavior, when we know that people operate in a world of short-term benefit over long-term reward? We're not going to change those behaviors through knowledge training...we'll only change them through behaviorally-focused training. Games, simulations, contextualized practice...immersive learning environments are the bridge between having access to data and changing behavior for better results.

We can, and already do, measure behavior in almost every aspect of our lives. Learning professionals need to stop focusing on knowledge and start focusing on behavioral change as the basis of our design practice or risk obsolescence (see: Instructional Design is Dead). Our jobs aren't about making sure people know things...they are about making sure people can do things better. We can design those experiences and measure those outcomes. If we aren't doing that, we're not doing our jobs.

Gauntlet thrown. 

FINALLY some research! Games improve corporate learning results

For years, the serious games industry has danced around the questions of whether games are better for learning. We've pushed past objections about something being too "game-like" or "fun." We would come up with other words for games, like "competitive environments." All the while, we have held our conviction that well-designed games really DO improve learning outcomes.

And now there's some research to prove it.  (Source: sciencedaily.com and article link here)

A University of Colorado Denver Business School study found those trained on video games do their jobs better, have higher skills and retain information longer than workers learning in less interactive, more passive environments.

"Companies have been designing video games for employees for years but so far it has all been done on a hunch. They suspected the games helped but they could never actually prove it," said Traci Sitzmann, PhD, assistant professor of management at the Business School whose study will be published in the winter edition of Personnel Psychology. "We now know video games work, and we know why they work."

Sitzmann spent over a year examining 65 studies and data from 6,476 trainees and discovered those using video games had an 11 percent higher factual knowledge level, a 14 percent higher skill-based knowledge level and a 9 percent higher retention rate than trainees in comparison groups.

I only hope there will be more research and data where that came from.

Data

There are lots of people who are smart, people who can figure things out, people who really "get it" when you talk to them about something. Sometimes these smart people are wrong. Worse, right or wrong, smart people are not always the people able to make the big decisions. And sometimes smart people, right or wrong, aren't able to convince decision-makers (who may also be smart, but not always) to listen to them.

Data is a powerful sword for smart people. I could write about how data can be twisted, manipulated, etc...but let's keep this short and focused and assume that data is valid and smart people have good intentions.

Data can help a smart person who is wrong recognize it. Data can help smart people who are right prove it.

And data can sometimes make a person smart.

Be on the lookout for data, both that supports your viewpoint and that conflicts with it. Once you have an opinion that the data supports, use that data to convince others.

There's nothing more convincing than a smart person who's got great data to back her (or him) up.

How much does it cost?

We're deep in proposal writing mode on multiple projects and about to talk to countless people at DevLearn 08 this week about the work that we do. No matter how fantastically appropriate, effective, and downright awesome your solutions are to your clients problems, eventually, you need to tell them how much its going to cost to implement your brilliant ideas.

I propose a challenge to all of us out there on the "vendor side"--don't just tell them how much it will cost. Tell them how much money they'll make.

Not a completely radical idea, but how many of us include this in our conversations and proposals? I'm not simply talking about saying "cost saving" or "improved processes"--everyone says that. I mean, give them some numbers or percentages. "Your sales are likely to increase between 5 and 20%." "You'll save an average of $300 per year per employee on travel expenses by making one meeting virtual."

Great idea, I'm sure you're thinking, but how do I get that data? Ha! Yes, well, here's my other challenge to you--don't end your projects with the delivery of your "final" product. All of us should be sticking around a bit longer and collecting data on the effectiveness of our projects, products and services. You remember those learning objectives? Performance objectives? Sales objectives? Time to start establishing baselines and then actually measuring results. And Voila! Data for you to share.

We all talk about developing effective learning solutions. Do you have the data to back up your claims? If not, you better start thinking about how you'll be gathering that data. I'm much more interested in saying "It'll cost you X but save you/make you Y" than just "it'll cost you X." Aren't you?

Where the money is...

Sometimes I like to know that other people think that there's a possibility of my crazy ideas making money. Yes, I think virtual worlds are still in their infancy. But a change is a comin' people. Follow the dollars...

Geography of virtual world usage

I ran across this visual representation of the geographical distribution of virtual world users. Interesting for a few reasons...one, it shows that the US is not the leading user of virtual worlds and that there are numerous countries that have close if not equivalent usage. I would argue that actual geography likely plays a large part in this; virtual worlds are an effective tool in connecting people together, and some of the leading countries (Australia, New Zealand) have populations distributed in a way that may make virtual worlds an effective communication tool.

This theory also holds true for the trend data in the US. New York and California were the first states with concentrated interest, but now Georgia and other states with large rural populations have overtaken them.

Please note that this data was taken from Google; because of this, Asian countries are most definitely skewed. Asian countries do not tend to use Google as their search engine, and any of these trends are only as good as the data used.