Flip Your Training presentation at ASTD ICE 2013 #astd2013

Yesterday I presented at ASTD ICE on how to flip your training and design for practice in the classroom. It was a full house and I had so much fun presenting! For once, I took a picture from the stage...it might be too small, but if you look closely, you'll see people in the audience with their hands raised, indicating if there was an empty seat next to them. This pic was taken right before I got started, and I was amazed at the cooperation in the audience to make sure everyone who wanted to attend could find a seat. I found out later that they put up the "Full Capacity" sign after everyone in the audience actually made sure it was really full capacity...not an empty seat in the house. That's teamwork, people. It seriously warmed my heart. I truly had the best audience at the conference.

Here are my slides, although the good stuff was in the presentation/conversation/discussion. Very excited to talk more on this topic; it's a great tie in to what I do at lynda.com and to my upcoming book, Immersive Learning. 

Flip Your Training from Koreen Olbrish

Thanks to all that attended and tweeted and waited to talk to me afterwards. Thanks especially to the gentleman who reminded me afterwards about the different rescue strategies for choking versus cardiac arrest (see? this is the guy I want in the room if I ever need rescuing!). 

I'll post more on this topic soon, as well as my reflections on ICE. Please drop me a note if you'd like more info on my presentation.

For those of you who requested: I realized I included my analysis interview questions in my book! In an effort not to cannibalize my own writing, I'll check to see if it's kosher to share it here or if it's a book "exclusive." Thanks for your interest, and patience! (this author thing is all new to me...)

Data is meaningless out of context: thoughts on the Tin Can API (xAPI)

Just posted a comment on Dr. Eric Fox's blog post from last fall on his thoughts on the Tin Can API:  A Behavioral Scientist's Initial Thoughts on the Tin Can API, Big Data and Learning Analytics. If you haven't read it, you should. My comment to him is re-posted below. Let's keep the conversation going. 

Data is meaningless out of context

Hi Eric,

GREAT post and happy to see you've delved into one of my biggest issues with the Tin Can API. Ironically, someone pointed out this post to me, having just left ASTD's TechKnowledge conference where there was continued buzz and interest. As a immersive learning designer and someone who has struggled with how to quantify practice into meaningful data, I am thrilled that there maybe an emerging standard that could help capture that data. The problem, as you correctly point out, is that reporting activity neither demonstrates learning nor performance improvement.

The hard work is in establishing actual performance metrics and measuring improvement through various learning activities. Simply reporting that you did something doesn't show qualitatively OR quantitatively whether that activity has any impact on what you know, or what you can do better.

I see potential here, but it troubles me that people are too "oooh! shiny!" about one minor piece of a much bigger piece of work, namely, correlating activity to performance. There are A LOT of potential problems with the Tin Can API, and so far, I haven't seen any best practices, use cases, or case studies that demonstrate its most effective use. Another problem? Those directly involved in the creation of the Tin Can API jumping into every discussion and squashing the much needed conversation among the rest of the community. Much like a community manager who tries to force conversations in a certain direction, there has been much talk in the industry about our inability to have deep conversations about the pros and cons of the Tin Can API without the developers and evangelists inserting themselves and trying to guide the conversations. Like pushy sales people, they are becoming a turn off for people who want to research, investigate and share their own conclusions. If I want to hear the sales pitch, I'll talk to a sales person. If I want to talk to my peers, I go to social media. Unfortunately, the sales people have hijacked these social conversations and are creating an atmosphere where no one wants to participate.

It reminds me too keenly of my experience with virtual worlds...the developers so in love with what they had built that they stopped listening to the concerns, needs, and objections of consumers and their potential customers. When you build something, you sometimes get too close to it to be able to see the chinks in the armor. When developers start arguing with naysayers, it's a clear sign that it's time for them to let go. Like an artist, you can have intention with your work, but the true meaning is what every person brings to it. It may be time for the developers to step down, and let practitioners lead the next phase of the discussion to help the Tin Can API survive its inevitable fall into the "trough of disillusionment."

Let's hope the conversation continues and that the real problems with the Tin Can API are not ignored. No system is perfect, but ignoring the problems, or trying to squash the conversation about them, does not make them go away. I'm hopeful that we can all learn from each other in making the Tin Can API useful and meaningful.

A love story for Valentine's Day

When I explain my current family situation to, well, anyone, I get looks of wonder, a clear feeling of "I don't know how you do that," and sometimes even pity.

Let me tell you: My life is non-traditionally glorious because it's full of love.

Love comes and goes in your life. Family, friends...it's amazing how we all evolve together or grow apart. When I say that the last few years have been the most challenging of my life, it's because these last five years have challenged every belief I ever held about love and made me see who I really am.

Several years ago, I made a series of bad choices. Some were clearly my fault, some were guided by broken promises. My marriage to a wonderful man was failing because it turned out that the life we had built together wasn't making either of us very happy. I met someone else who mirrored every hurt I was feeling and who said all the right things to me. The timing wasn't perfect, but I told myself, "when is it ever, really?" As I ended one relationship and another was beginning, I saw an end to my loneliness in sight.

Words are easy. I was so naive, so blind in my faith in his words that I let myself circle deeper and deeper into a situation that could never end happily. The lies that he perpetuated in every aspect of his life, that I knew and accepted, only foreshadowed the depth of the lies he was telling me too. I thought I was too smart to be deceived, but I believed everything he told me. Why? Because I wanted to. I wanted to believe the pictures he painted for me with his words, I wanted to believe in the future he described, because the present was miserable and lonely. Having faith in him was directly tied to my faith that life would get better.

Over time, I lost more and more of myself and accepted smaller and smaller pieces of happiness. The final straw: a holiday weekend where he texted and called me with detailed descriptions of what he was doing at home alone, all the while he was away for the weekend and not alone. When I confronted him, he blamed me, told me that I didn't want to know the truth.

Actually? Yes, I did.

I hold myself to unachievable standards in all things, and usually that makes me spend a good part of each day feeling like a failure. It's not the rational part: I see the things I've accomplished, but more often I focus on the things that I haven't done, that I screwed up or outright failed at. There's lots of those, for sure. But this failure, this acceptance of lies and broken promises and holding on so tightly to one path to happiness, this failure broke me. It broke my heart, it broke my faith in myself, and it broke my trust in words.

So far, this isn't much of a love story, huh?

When I was at my lowest, I took a risk. I went on a date. Worse, I went on a blind date with someone I had only met online. That date could have made for a really funny anecdote of bad chemistry and deal-breaker personality quirks. Instead, it led me here, to the happiest I've ever been.

When you have nothing to lose is when you're the most honest. I wasn't looking for a relationship; I don't really know that I was looking for anything more than getting out of the house and having a drink, to be honest. On our first date, I'm pretty sure I said anything I could think of to try to scare John off. My divorce wasn't final. My ex lived in the apartment in the lower level of my house. I have three kids. I was still shaking free from that horribly toxic relationship. No matter what I threw at him, he laughed at me, somewhat incredulous that we shared such similar paths. He had his own stories, and his own three kids. We joked that I was probably a crazy cat lady, and that he was just uncovering more of my cats. We talked for hours, closed the restaurant down, and left each other awkwardly in the parking lot that night without a good night kiss.

It's hard to believe that was only a little over a year ago. In the months that followed, we stayed honest about our tender but healing wounds. He did his best not to scare me off with too much attention and I did my best not to run away to spare him all of my complications. It seemed too easy between the two of us. Friendship, laughter, excellent adventures...and honesty. He always kept his word. He's got an infectious laugh and killer dimples. It took me a little time to see myself as he seems to see me. It's taken even longer for me to forgive myself for my past mistakes, no matter how warmly he embraced me and accepted them as part of who I was and who I am. Sometimes I still need him to remind me.

Oh yeah, we also got tattoos...

In a whirlwind year, we moved across the country, finalized our divorces, bought a house, started new jobs and integrated our kids. My ex moved here, found a new job, a new house...he's part of our crazy blended family too. Six kids, two dogs, my ex, John and I.

I get it. I know why people look at me in horrified amazement.

I know these things: I am loved. I have a partner who is true in all things and who I can depend on for anything. He is my constant reminder of what good looks like. I appreciate him not just for what he does but for who he is. I have an amazing mix of kids who each carry pieces of my heart and who teach me and help me grow as a mother and as a person. I laugh every day. I know what is important. I will never settle for anything less than ecstatically happy ever again.

It's an amazing adventure and I can't wait to read the next chapter in this love story.

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%.

Timshel

One of my two favorite books is East of Eden by John Steinbeck. (The other is The Brothers Karamazov by Fyodor Dostoevsky...ironic maybe that both books are about brothers? weird.)

It's a book about free will, about choices...about how what you choose is who you become, or defines who you are. One of my favorite passages in East of Eden (actually in any book, ever) describes the differing translations of a single Bible passage, and the implications of what the different translations of that passage mean. The word around which the translations vary is "timshel," which literally means "thou mayest." 

This is the core of what it means to be human, the central guiding factor of anything we do. "Thou mayest." You choose what you do. You choose who you are. Each decision that we face, we have the opportunity to choose our course of action. 

There are implications of your choices, for yourself and for others, but ultimately you need to decide who you are deciding for. Is what is good for you and bad for others a good choice or a bad choice? Is what's good for others but hurts you the right decision? Who defines what is a good or bad choice? Who decides whose happiness is more important? Who decides whose pain is more valid? Who decides who is right or wrong?

The truth is, we all do. We, each one of us, decides every day. Luckily, most decisions aren't that complicated...most decisions don't have serious implications for our or other peoples' happiness or wellbeing. But some do. Do you stay at work late to work towards a promotion to make more money to support your family, or do you leave early to spend more time with your kids? Do you end a relationship that isn't working and deal with the consequences, or do you fight to make it work even if it never turns out to be something that makes you truly happy? Do you forgive a violation of your trust, or are some trespasses unforgivable? Do you keep the $20 you find on the street, or do you turn it in? Do you make decisions for the sake of your kids, or do you make decisions that set an example for your children? If you do things for yourself, are you selfish? If you do things for other people, at the expense of doing things for yourself, is that better or worse? Do you judge and treat others harshly for decisions they make that are different than your own, or do you accept our differences as we're all trying to figure this out, day by day?

Timshel. 

Thou mayest. 

You have a choice. You decide who you are. It's empowering. It's terrifying. It exposes weakness. It shows true character. It provides opportunity for redemption. It is the core of humanity. 

Timshel. 

Deliberate adaptation

It may be 2013, but we're not starting tabula rasa. We have work to do this year.

Like many people, I sat and cried for hours the day of the Sandy Hook elementary shooting. I cried for days afterward. I cried for the lives lost in Newtown, CT. I cried for my children, who are growing up in this world and have to learn about these tragedies. I cried for our culture, when news reporters think it's ok to interview young children immediately after they've gone through a horrific, traumatic event. I cried for our country, which has been resistant to address the problems that are contributing to the continuous parade of massacres enabled by the widespread availability of guns and stigmatized access to mental healthcare, if healthcare is accessible at all.

I had to stop reading Facebook and Twitter. I couldn't process all of the emotions. When I came back to them, perhaps unsurprisingly, I was appalled by what people were saying.

People were saying if teachers had guns, this tragedy could have been prevented. OMG, are you kidding me? That is the dumbest thing I've ever heard. As a former teacher, it was not part of my degree program to learn how to use a firearm to defend myself and my students against homicidal maniacs. NOR SHOULD IT BE. Teachers are professionals, educators who believe strongly in their mission to help children learn and reach their potential. They are underpaid and undervalued in our society. Are you really saying that in addition to all of the critically important things that they need to do each day that help our society stay educated and strong, that they should be tasked with knowing how to shoot a vigilante? Get a grip.

School security...I heard people saying that schools need to be safer, more security guards and more lock down. Again, really? Is that an appropriate atmosphere for learning? Is that how you want your kids to grow up? In a police state? No. I don't want armed guards greeting my kids at school each day. I don't even like seeing them at the airport.

Those opinions are purporting that our society isn't the problem, it's schools that aren't prepared and are letting us down. Let schools deal with the REAL problems they have...underpaid teachers, under-funding in general, lack of parent support and involvement, archaic models of instruction that haven't caught up to modern technology and society...schools have enough on their plates without having to fend off armed crazies.

I heard people saying there's nothing to be done. That people have the right to have guns and taking them away won't prevent mass murders. That's such a defeatist and "woe is me" attitude. We don't have to accept the status quo. It's fine if you want to sit on your ass and not do anything about it, but please don't get in the way of people who DO want to prevent future tragedies.

The toughest was seeing people arguing about what causes such a horrendous event to occur. Some people blamed a lack of gun control. Yes, that's a problem. Some people blamed a lack of care in our society for people with mental illness. Yes, that's also a problem. It's not one or the other; it's both.

People have access to guns with which they can kill people easily. Lots of people. I come from a hunting family; I'm not talking about sporting rifles. I'm talking about guns that you're not allowed to use to kill a deer. You can buy them online. You can buy them all over the place. Sure, there are some screening procedures. But hey, if I can't pass the screen, maybe my mom can. Or my brother. Or my friend. The U.S. has a tragic number of gun deaths each year. Why are we allowing this to continue? Oh right...the Second Amendment. Funny, we've evolved as a society in so many ways...we abolished slavery. Women can vote. We're finally acknowledging equality regardless of your sexual orientation. Why is it so difficult for us to let go of guns?

Let me ask you this...how many stories do you hear of someone who was able to prevent a tragedy because they had a gun? How many rapists stopped? How many murders prevented? How many kidnappers thwarted? It's weird...because I hear of so many accidental shootings, but very rarely of guns being appropriately used as defensive weapons. Why is that? Oh right...fear. We've been sold this bill of goods, that we need to have guns to protect ourselves. For every story of someone effectively using a gun to stop a bad guy, there are countless of bad guys who aren't stopped who never should have had a gun, and even more accidental deaths caused by guns. What exactly do we need guns to protect us from? The boogeyman? Zombies? Home intruders?

I would be willing to give up everyone having guns if it meant EVERYONE had less guns. I would be willing to explain that to my children. I would be willing to risk the zombie apocalypse without automatic weapons, if it meant that in the meantime, less tragedies would occur.

There are a few truths. Change requires action.

If you believe something needs to change to prevent future tragedies, you have a few options for action you could take:

• You might decide that tighter gun control laws would prevent future tragedies. I would agree. The NRA is a powerful lobby in our government and they have somehow convinced people that guns aren't the problem. The data doesn't prove that out. If you want to see more gun control in the United States, put your money and your time where your mouth is. Certainly those who don't want restrictions on guns are doing that in numbers. 

• You might decide that we need to have better access to mental healthcare, that we need to make it affordable, and that we need to remove the stigma from helping those who need it receive care. If you had a bad heart, you'd have no problem seeking the best medical care. Why is it different if someone's brain needs medical care? We have far to go in this country in ensuring people with mental illness get the care that they need.

• You might decide that the media is to blame in glorifying the perpetrators of these horrific deeds. Guess what? The media is selling what people are buying. You want the media to stop creating these villains? Stop watching. Stop reading. Do you know the name of the shooter in Newtown, CT? Do you know the names of any of the victims? How about any of the victims in Aurora, CO? Who should we be remembering, the victims or sickos who killed them?

• You might decide to pray. Fair enough. The vicitims and their families need all of our support right now. They need our strength and they need our love. But don't rely on God to fix the problems...if anything, if you believe in God's power, then it's pretty clear that God keeps sending us the same message OVER and OVER. Maybe God is telling us it's not enough to pray...it's time to take action.

Nothing changes until we decide to change it. If we don't fight to change, even when it's difficult, we're accepting this status quo, accepting that we're ok with ongoing mass murders, people not being treated for mental illness and our children living in fear. It's easier to learn how to live with a problem than to change it; they are both a form of adaptation. The question is, to what do you want to adapt?

So long, 2012: You were a very good year

Wow, 2012. Way to bring it.

New job, new house, new coast, new climate, new amazing family and a wedding in the works. Heck, I even got a new tattoo.

For the past few years, I've really looked forward to saying goodbye to the old year and kicking off a fresh, new one. Ahh, but 2012, you are a tough act to follow.

I'll look back at this year with affection, for the changes it brought and the happiness that came with those changes. I am so very grateful.

Still, time marches on and as much as I'm reflecting on the past, I'm excited about what 2013 has to bring. As always, I've written a few to-do's for the new year:

• Play more games. 

This one is pretty simple. Video games, board games, social games...whatever. Play more, not for work, just because I love it. (For what it's worth, I've already started on this one!)

• Run another 5k.

I "ran" my first one this year. I'd like to do better, and I'd like to train a lot more. Looks like another round of P90X is in order...

• Get to know my local UUs.

I'll admit it. One of the things I miss most about Pennsylvania is my church. I visited the local congregation here in Santa Barbara and it was lovely, but maybe because I'm stubborn or maybe because I was particularly missing my congregation in West Chester, I haven't gone since last summer. There was a lot of "new" that was good in 2012...this is a "new" that I want to embrace in 2013.


So here's to you, 2012, you tenacious and adventurous year! Thank you for the joy you brought, the excellent memories you leave with me, and the set up for an even better 2013. Cheers, everyone!