Wherefore Passion?

Dave Ferguson has revived the Working/Learning Blog Carnival and has asked for thoughts on "work at learning: learning at work". Here's what's on my mind this rainy Sunday.

My dissertation research focused broadly on communities of practice (CoPs), and narrowly on a single community comprised of workplace trainers who gathered voluntarily to “stamp out bad training”. The group, now in its 24th year of evolving membership, has served members well as a vehicle for developing skills and camaraderie. They worked together to develop workshops and a lengthy train-the-trainer course; they used meetings as an opportunity to “dry run” new programs or activities and get helpful feedback from other practitioners; they learned by watching one another work and by working with one another. The CoP provided them the opportunity to learn about their work while learning while doing their work. (The whole dissertation – be warned, all 345 pages of it – can be found here )

While my interviewees offered myriad motivations for joining and participating, virtually all of them, thinking back on their time as novices, expressed frustrations with being hired, or placed, into positions for which they admitted they did not feel qualified or were inadequately prepared, expressed their lack of clarity about what a trainer did and how one knew if one was doing it well, described their feelings of isolation at being the organization’s only trainer -- or the only one in a training unit interested in improving -- and reported what seemed a shocking indifference about their job performance on the part of their supervisors.

While this may be where they began their work as trainers, by the time they were in my interview pool most described themselves as “passionate” about their work. Where does passion germinate? Why does one worker become passionate where another gives up and moves on to another role? While it was beyond the scope of my study, the matter came up enough for me to start asking, “When did you become passionate about training?” Without fail, the answers tied to feelings of confidence and efficacy. This was not necessarily tied to expertise – some interviewees said they became passionate long before they felt they had achieved mastery – but to a feeling of effectiveness: “When I saw that my training really made a difference.” “When I saw my first ‘a-ha’ moment in a learner’s eyes.” Is it, then, confidence that generates passion? And in turn, is reasonable to infer that it is passion that drives the desire to become more expert? And another thing: Is it a matter of achieving, and feeling comfortable with, the state of "conscious incompetence"? ("I know I don't know everything, but I'm confident that I have the ability to learn more, and I want to?")

Confidence and efficacy over mastery and expertise. Role clarity, feeling one knows what one’s job is, and whether one is doing it well. Finding outlets for overcoming feelings of isolation and the indifference of a supervisor. Comfort in the "I don't know now, but someday I may" zone. Passion may be what drives the desire to achieve mastery.

What does this tell us about our role in developing more passionate learners?

State of E-Learning 2009

Elearn Magazine asked me for 500 words on my views about the current state and future of e-learning. The piece begins:

"As the news about the economy grows ever bleaker, organizations are finally forced to take a hard look at travel and other expenses associated with traditional classroom training. I predict this will bring several changes to the e-learning horizon—some good, some perhaps not."

The other 456 words are here.

"I'm a Computer Whisperer"

Well, closing the lid DOES work sometimes...

E-Learning and the Panopticon

Bentham developed the idea of the panopticon, a prison design that provided a single central point from which all prisoners/cells/activities could be observed. (Many American shopping malls adopted this as a design guide, too.) Foucault later wrote at length of the pervasiveness of the concept -- the need to observe and regulate -- as it extended to other institutions such as hospitals and schools.

And it extends to a new realm, now. Consider universities providing "distance education" courses via a course management tool like Blackboard, into which administration can ostensibly drop at any time to read student discussion comments, watch instructor videos, review recordings of virtual classroom meetings, and access other daily course activity. While the Dean could always drop by the traditional classroom, he/she didn't do it very often, and when it happened you knew he/she was there. Distance learning allows for a new level of observation/supervision, including simple lurking, for those who choose to use it.

I find myself in the position of panopticon resident from time to time, not always intentionally, and most often in dealing with data generated by an LMS or other tracking system. For instance: At his manager's request I provided an e-learning/technology resistant colleague -- someone with whom I need to remain collegial -- with a free login to a suite of commercial e-learning courses relevant to content the trainer taught. The product includes really excellent, hard-to-build-from-scratch simulations with branching decicisionmaking. Months later the trainer dropped by my office to describe at length how much time he'd spent examining the courses, detailing the myriad reasons they just wouldn't work in replacing, supplementing, or extending the content he taught (um, customer service, e-mail rules, MBTI, and basic supervision). He went on and on about how the courses were not relevant to the public sector, with "everything" he looked at targeted at people in sales and manufacturing. When I went into the system to review product usage for the quarter, I saw that he'd spent exactly 10 minutes and 11 seconds in one course, and began one simulation but did not finish it. That's it.

What are the ethical implications here?

Should university administration make their presence known when dropping in to an academic course? Who "owns" the course? The university, the faculty teaching it, or the learners enrolled in it? Should class discussions be a private matter between students and instructor? Should students have a right to say who should have access to the "content" they generate during the course? Do students have the right to be notified when someone other than the instructor is observing them online?

Should we be more explicit with learners that online activity can be tracked, and what effect might that have on learner interest and motivation? How might it affect the learner-trainer relationship? How can you say it without sounding like Big Brother?

What do we do when, as with my own example, we are privy to knowledge we'd just as soon we didn't have? Not long ago my colleague's boss called to discuss her continued issues with the resistant classroom trainer, who had shared his "findings" with her. What would you have said? Would you have confronted the trainer, who is also a colleague? What are the rights of the learner in the online world? What is the role of the trainer/consultant in this situation?

What rules should exist for those of us who have access to the panopticon?

Reality or ... Media?

My January 24 post, "Collapse of a Community of Practice", included an aside about what training practitioners are really doing v. what the media -- print, business blogs, "forums" and "webinars" would have us believe (another aside: there is nothing positive about the word "webinar"). My third book, From Analysis to Evaluation, was envisioned as a compilation of tools developed and used by practitioners in the field, loosely arranged around the ADDIE model of instructional design. Dozens of authors and training practitioners were invited to contribute to it, and were specifically asked for tools they were using in their own work. I thought I had a pretty good idea of what to expect in terms of submissions, and was somewhat surprised at what did not arrive. For instance, no one -- not one -- person submitted anything on determining training results-on-investment (ROI).

As this is such a hot topic in training-related magazines and books, I don’t know whether the lack of submissions is coincidental, that no one ever needed to create a “homegrown” tool for this, or that it’s a reflection on what is really happening in the field in spite of what the literature tells us. As I knew readers would expect to find it, I went back and added some material where reviewers felt its absence would be especially noticed, but let me say again: I asked people to share what they used.

Last week I tipped sacred training cows. This week I'm asking something different. What do you find that you really use in your practice, and does it differ from what media and myth say you should?

Sacred Training Cows

I am just home from Training 2009 where, among other things, I offered sessions on "Better than Bullet Points" and "Instructional Design for the Real World". With both these topics I always manage to tip a few sacred cows. While I hope the presentations provoke thought more than ire, I know that I sometimes ruffle feathers -- often, I suspect, by hitting too close to home. Here are some of the sacred training cows I tipped in Atlanta:

--Much of what we call 'e-learning' would be much more useful if distributed as text documents.
--The traditional approach to training evaluation is seriously flawed.
--Good e-learning is about design, not software.
--Irrelevant or cute art, graphics, animations, and colors only distract the learner; they do not enhance the training by "adding visual interest". (How about the example in this post: relevant, or distracting?)
--Boring content is no excuse for boring training.
--The tendency for trainers to fall into the role of order taker ("Yes, sir, you want an order of teambuilding with a side of stress management? Coming right up.") does not constitute good "customer service". It is harmful to the learners, the managers, and ultimately the credibility of the training profession.


What other sacred training cows would you add to the list?

The Myth of "Best Practices"

I get lots of requests for lists of "best practices"...in e-learning, in the virtual classroom, in instructional design, in classroom presentation. Here's the deal: there's no such thing. A "best practice" is best only in the precise, specific context in which it exists. I don't recall who first offered this analogy, but think of it this way: what works in my marriage won't necessarily work in -- and may even damage -- yours. Even if moved from one situation to another very close one, the odds of transfer being made with practice intact is nil.

In education they call this a problem with "fidelity": one teacher writes a fabulously effective lesson plan and shares it with her friends. They each decide to 'adapt' it in a slightly different way to suit some unique need of their students. It is no longer the practice that was supposedly "best". Of course then, when the end users don't get the desired outcome, they say it's isn't their fault...because after all, they were using "best practices".

So how do we address those who pressure us to produce a list of, or abide by, "best" practices?

[Update: I ran into a great visual example of the problem of fidelity in best practices. Check out the update.]

Can 'Competencies' be Taught?

I tend to agree with Marcus Buckingham (First, Break all the Rules). Do you? What's been your experience with "competencies"?

"Competencies are part skills, part knowledge and part talent. They lump together, haphazardly. Consequently, even though designed with clarity in mind, competencies can wind up confusing everybody. Managers soon find themselves sending people off to training classes to learn such 'competencies' as strategic thinking or attention to detail or innovation. But these aren't competencies. These are talents. They cannot be taught. If you are going to use competencies, make it clear which are skills or knowledge and therefore can be taught, and which are talents and therefore cannot."

Information Skills Needed

I've been doing a good deal of research/work lately with knowledge management. One of my concerns is that the focus so often seems to be only on output: where can we store knowledge? What sort of database can we build for it? Do we need more procedures manuals?

Here is a piece out of Millikin University on the information skills needed by those entering knowledge work roles. Apart from providing an opposite-side-of-the-coin view, it points to new tasks for educators and trainers in developing workers.

"The seven information skills highlighted are: (1) retrieving information; (2) evaluating information; (3) organizing information; (4) collaborating around information; (5) analyzing information; (6) presenting information; and (7) securing information. For each information skill, there is a discussion of its significance, the logical skills required for its effective use, and its technological components."

Final Version: E-Learning Buzzword Bingo Card

Here 'tis, with thanks to all those who contributed (see original post and comments). I had more suggestions than spaces (especially loved Bex's "needs more cowbell") so if I compile enough maybe there'll be a Card 2. I am scared to think there might be that many buzzwords associated with e-learning, but fear there probably are...

The Collapse of a Community of Practice (CoP)

I have long been a subscriber to, first, the old TR-DEV listserv and its revised format as a moderated Yahoo group. While the site shows 4,000 members, I would guess that truly active membership -- lots of posting, interaction, some argument -- is in the range of 50-100. Debates have been long and often spirited, and while I have not always found it all useful (too much parsing of semantics, too many side visits to politics last fall) it did keep me informed about current interests in the training field and what practitioners were really working on (as opposed to what the media often report). While a true community of practice is usually characterized by its lack of formal oversight, the moderators did a good job of blocking out blatant marketing attempts and people phising for email addresses, and refocusing/refereeing discussions when needed.

ANYWAY, the announcement came from the moderators this week that the site will be shut down effective Tuesday, and they will not be entertaining any further discussion or answering responses about it. They did provide a long explanation, including acknowledgement of new social media technologies that did not exist back when the listserv was started. And, really, they said, they're tired. It is an often thankless job, with anyone with a beef about anything taking it out on the moderators who were doing this voluntarily in the first place. The moderators have already deleted all the materials in the archives, things like handouts and whitepapers and tools submitted by members.

The response has been, not unexpectedly, dramatic and emotional. People are shocked at the swiftness of the decision; comments on the board this week tend to alternate between "thanks for all the years of service" and "how dare you?" The conversations have raised some points to ponder on the matter of CoPs. Let's cogitate:

1. Who "owns" a CoP?
2. To whom does the material shared by, created by, and stored in a community repository belong?
3. Does the life of a community have such a definite end point? What will happen next?


While I am sad to see TR-DEV go I admit I have been fascinated at watching the drama play out this week. For those really interested in the philosophical side of all this, there is a small body of academic literature on power issues in CoPs; authors include Huzzard; Pemberton, Mavin, & Stalker; and Roberts.

E-Learning Buzzword Bingo Card

Clark Quinn, Cammy Bean, Steve Sorden and I have been having a Twitter discussion about buzzwords associated with e-learning. The conversation quickly showed that once-useful concepts are often cannibalized and reduced down to little more than hype for the marketing and the misguided. For more, read Clark's excellent post, "Less than Words."

Meanwhile, help me complete the "Official E-Learning Buzzword Bingo" card as we are still short a few terms -- but I know they're out there. What terms did we miss?

Alternatives to Kirkpatrick

While the Kirkpatrick taxonomy is something of a sacred cow in training circles—and much credit goes to Donald Kirkpatrick for being the first to attempt to apply intentional evaluation to workplace training efforts—it is not the only approach. Apart from being largely atheoretical and ascientific (hence, 'taxonomy', not 'model' or 'theory'), several critics find the Kirkpatrick taxonomy seriously flawed. For one thing, the taxonomy invites evaluating everything after the fact, focusing too heavily on end results while gathering little data that will help inform training program improvement efforts. (Discovering after training that customer service complaints have not decreased only tells us that the customer service training program didn’t “work”; it tells us little about how to improve it.)

Too, the linear causality implied within the taxonomy (for instance, the assumption that passing a test at level 2 will result in improved performance on the job at level 3) masks the reality of transfer of training efforts into measurable results. There are many factors that enable or hinder the transfer of training to on-the-job behavior change, including support from supervisors, rewards for improved performance, culture of the work unit, issues with procedures and paperwork, and political concerns. Learners work within a system, and the Kirkpatrick taxonomy essentially attempts to isolate training efforts from the systems, context, and culture in which the learner operates.

In the interest of fairness I would like to add that that Kirkpatrick himself has pointed out some of the problems with the taxonomy, and suggested that in seeking to apply it the training field has perhaps put the cart before the horse. He advises working backwards through his four levels more as a design, rather than an evaluation, strategy; that is: What business results are you after? What on-the-job behavior/performance change will this require? How can we be confident that learners, sent back to the work site, are equipped to perform as desired? And finally: how can we deliver the instruction in a way that is appealing and engaging?

An alternative approach to evaluation was developed Daniel Stufflebeam. His CIPP model, originally covering Context-Input-Process- Product/Impact, and later extended to include Sustainability, Effectiveness, and Transportability, provides a different take on the evaluation of training. Western Michigan University has an extensive overview of the application of the model, complete with tools, and a good online bibliography of
literature on the Stufflebeam model. Short story: this one is more about improving what you're doing than proving what you did.

More life beyond Kirkpatrick: Will Thalhimer endorses Brinkerhoff's Success Case evaluation method and commends him for advocating that learning professionals play a more “courageous” role in their organizations.

Enough already, Jane! More later on alternatives to the Kirkpatrick taxonomy. Yes, there are more.


(Some comments adapted from the 'evaluation' chapter in my book, From Analysis to Evaluation: Tools, Tips, and Techniques for Trainers. Pfeiffer, 2008.)

The First Help Desk Call

"Compared to the scroll, it takes longer to turn the pages of a book." And what about the manual?

Hemorrhaging Money

I've talked about this before and want to add a new voice to the choir. I get two kinds of calls from people wanting to "do" e-learning. The first come form those who are interested in expanding their scope to include more learners, to reduce travel and other costs, or to otherwise solve a business problem. The other calls come from those who want to know how to track and monitor and measure completions. They are always more interested in buying an LMS they don't yet need (and often don't even really know what it does) than in designing anything resembling effective online training.

The question of buying an LMS to track and monitor and yada yada recently came up on one of the Yahoo discussion groups to which I belong. Here are some fabulously in-your-face comments from Peter Hunter, www.breakingthemould.co.uk, quoted with his permission:

"If your training is not producing added value to your bottom line,then what is
the point of tracking it?

All you are doing is measuring the exact rate that the training
department is hemorrhaging money out of the company.

If your training is adding value, then measure the value it is adding.

When we train for the sake of training we are destroying the
organisation we are supposed to be supporting.

Think carefully about why you need this software and if the reason
turns out to be that your boss told you to get it, go ahead."

Tony Karrer's E-Learning Learning Community

Thanks to Techpower's Tony Karrer for including the Bozarthzone blog on his list of sources for eLearning Learning It's "a community that tries to collect and organize the best information on the web that will help you learn and stay current on eLearning."

Be sure to check it out, and while you're at it be sure to also take a look at Tony's
elearning tech blog.

(And for you Twitterers/Tweeters/Twitterpeeps types, he's well worth following there, too.)

And PS: Happy New Year!

7 Things

Janet Clarey has thrown down the gauntlet of the "7 things" meme. So here are my "Seven Things You Don't Know About Me".

1. Getting married was the best thing I ever did and I wish more happily married people would speak up. My husband says, and I am sure he means this in the most positive possible sense, that we have to stay married forever -- because he doesn’t want me for an ex-wife.


2. If it weren’t for my global virtual village of training friends I would lose my mind, as everyone in my physical orbit thinks I am just speaking Plutonian or something most of the time.


3. If they made a movie of my life I would want the part of me to be played by Debra Winger or Whoopi Goldberg.


4. One of my favorite possessions is a “story people” card that says: “She accepts that she creates her own reality except for the parts where she wonders what the hell she was thinking.”


5. I would like to take credit for being brilliant and talented and gifted but in reality I probably owe most of my success to the facts that I can 1) follow instructions and 2) meet deadlines, which apparently hardly anyone else on earth can do.

6. They say that your favorite childhood book influences you more than you will suspect and will play out somewhere in your adult life. When I was 28 I was still single and liked it that way and lived in a funny little house on the edge of a little town with funny little pets. I even became a redhead. Looking back I realize: Yes, I was living the life of Pippi Longstocking.

7. I live at the top of one of the highest hills in Durham, North Carolina, and on a clear day can see the top of Duke Chapel from my deck. I would not change one thing about my house or my husband or my life. My favorite material possessions include my icemaker, my iPhone, my dishwasher with a timer, my under-sink hot water dispenser, the tall windows in my living room, my Mustang, and my little iPhone beanbag that cost way too much because of shipping but is perfect for watching movies on planes. I refuse to discard the Thin Clothes because you just never know. I am pleased we have so many great neighbors we genuinely like. I love my job and my work and yes those are different things. I am in deep denial that our beloved Corgi, Donald, is 13 years old and will likely not live to see 27. I do try to say, "Why not?" at least once a day.


And in the spirit of paying this forward I will pass the challenge on to
Karl Kapp
Jennifer Hofmann
Saul Carliner
Patti Shank
Jane Hart
Bryan Chapman
Phylise Banner

So do something already.

I get a lot of "my organization won't let me..." comments in training that I do. Steve Radick offers a wonderful response. Here's part of his post from yesterday. Visit him to read the whole thing:

"Don’t tell me it’s too hard or that your boss doesn’t know YouTube from an iPod. Those are excuses, not reasons. If YouTube is blocked where you work, get it unblocked. Write a white paper justifying why it shouldn’t be blocked. Meet with your boss about it. Meet with your boss’s boss about it. Start a blog where you talk about it. Volunteer to give a brown bag presentation to your office. Just DO something! Take the initiative and work on changing how your organization works - don’t just sit there sulking, saying, “I wish we could do social media here, but we can’t even get on Facebook so there’s no use.” Bringing social media to your organization isn’t something that happens from 9-5. It happens from 5-9, after everyone else has gone home...

Social media and government started not with some policy or memo from the senior leadership, but from regular people sitting in a cubicle who saw an opportunity and decided to do something about it. They didn’t see a policy prohibiting blogging and say, “oh well, I guess that ends that.” No, they pulled together briefings on why blogging was needed. They found examples of others who were doing it. They told anyone who would listen about the power of blogging. They got meetings with his bosses. They eventually changed the policy.

It’s time for you to be that guy and to step up, take the initiative and not let red tape and bureaucracy stop you. Don’t accept no as an answer and don’t let a couple unenlightened colleagues stop your drive to effect change. Stand out from the crowd and actually do something about it."

And I say A-men to that!!

How to DO THINGS v. How to GET THINGS DONE

One of the discussion points in my dissertation research involves the distinction between knowing how to do things (i.e., perform a task) and knowing how to get things done. At the agency where I work, for instance, we lost Grant of the Superpowers some years back. Grant was our "purchasing guy": apart from knowing how to fill out paperwork, Grant also knew who to call if you needed a check cut on a day not in the cycle, how to get stalled paperwork off someone's desk and back into the system, and which vendors would most likely extend agreements without lots of additional rigamarole. He knew how to get things done, and unfortunately, when he left he took that with him. And we haven't recovered yet.

As we shift to global transactions and face the coming exodus of Baby Boomers from the workplace businesses worry about capturing tacit knowlege. We usually mean skills --how to do things--and so far we continue to struggle even with that.

How will we capture the ways to get things done?

Gift idea

In his latest post Karl Kapp kindly offers gift-giving ideas for the cost conscious, namely copies of his book. I wholeheartedly endorse this plan and recommend his Gadgets, Games, and Gizmos for Learning as the perfect complement to the collected works of Jane Bozarth. Now, you're probably saying to yourself, "Gee, Jane already owns 4 signed, dog-eared, tattered copies of Karl Kapp's book (Gadgets, Games and Gizmos for Learning -- did I mention that already?), what could I possibly give Jane?" Well the answer, of course, is the Optoma EP-PK-101 PICO Pocket Projector. Is there anything anywhere cooler than this? Except maybe for Karl Kapp...