forward thinking in technology and learning

On the way home recently, I got stuck in traffic due to 4 different car accidents. Ambulances were at 3 of them. My point? Humans are terrible drivers. In our cars, we hurt people, kill people, and cause damage all day every day. So, why are we so resistant to autonomous vehicles? While they are not perfect, on their worst day they are multitudes better than the best days for humans. Yet we resist them. For example such as requiring a hand on the steering wheel or reducing the percentage of autonomous cars in one area. Autonomous vehicles could reduce traffic, reduce pollution, save lives, reduce injury, reduce crowded streets, reduce travel time, and improve the travel experience. From that perspective, I just don’t see a downside.

Why are we so hesitant to go all in?

The cost of learning is minimal, but the cost of NOT learning is HUGE. Business leaders, are you measuring the costs only in money?

Ask yourself

• Is there a lack of excitement and energy around learning and training in your organization?
• Are learning and training viewed as a requirement and not an opportunity?
• Is there a disconnect between training and the people being trained?
• Are training topics of no interest to some of the people being trained?
• Is training handed down from above with no input from the people?
• Do people in your organization dread training and learning?

What is un-training?
Most people hate training because they don’t want to be there, they don’t have a connection with the topic, they had no say so in what is being presented, management barely knows training is even going on, and oftentimes the training itself is terribly delivered.

Un-learning and Un-training takes out all of those elements, It is based on a very successful ed-tech and education conference style, called unconference, where the attendees decide the agenda and topics for discussion, learning, and training on the day of training. Un-training is especially effective in generating discussions, brainstorming, idea generation, and team building, but can also be used in skills development and technical training. Managers are invited but they are there at the exact same level as other attendees. After topics are crowd-decided, people go to the sessions of their choice. The “results” and “output” of the sessions are decided by the people in the sessions. Yes, it involves putting the responsibility for learning in the hands of the people and also managers and HR giving up control.

This event works because it is a 100% grass roots, from the agenda, topics, session delivery, and outputs.

Can it be done virtually and in-person?
Yes, it can be done both. It works the exact same way except the sessions are in virtual rooms instead of actual rooms

In general , how does it work?
On the day of (or maybe a couple of days before if needed), all attendees are asked to submit 3 topics they would like to see on the agenda. Those ideas are consolidated, merged, synthesized, and categorized; each of those ideas represents possible learning/training sessions. From the newly synthesized list, attendees are given 3 ‘votes’, in which they can vote for any of the ideas they see value in. Depending on how many session slots are open, popular vote wins, and available session slots are filled with top-voted session topics. No one will need to necessarily be a session leader, although the person who suggests a topic might at least get the discussion started. Now the agenda is set and people can start to plan out which sessions they will attend.

Ok, what are the details?

Materials and location: You will need a large room where everyone can fit. You need some sticky-notes, stickers (like elementary school teachers use), and 3 rooms large enough to fit 1/3 of the people.(1 room for each session topic )

Step 1: Collect a group of volunteers who would like to be part of the un-training team. The volunteers will coordinate (not lead) the event. Once the topics are decided, the volunteers become regular attendees. You may be surprised at people who will take an interest and are looking for ways to lead.

Step 2: Sell it. Publicize it. Let people in the organization know what you are doing. Make sure they know that they are 100% in charge of the training topics. Clear the calendar. Minimize conflicts. Managers encourage your people to participate. Make sure people have every incentive (except requiring attendance) to attend. Managers, leaders, and supervisors- You will need to decide, based on your culture as it stands right now, whether your presence at the event is positive or negative.

Step 3 IDEATION: Solicit topic ideas for the training from the attendees. You can try to have an umbrella topic under which you’d like ideas to be related to. Or you can just let the ideas flow from the ground up. No limit to how many ideas each person can submit. If you are in-person, you can literally pass out sticky-notes and let people put them on a wall, which allows others to see the ideas as they are generated. If virtual, you can replicate the sticky-note style of ideas posting by using a tool such as www.mural.co, lucidspark.com, https://miro.com/online-sticky-notes/ . Take 15 minutes max to do this.

• EXCEPTION: Technical Traning If some of the sessions will be specific software or other technical training, you will want to make sure you have someone in those sessions who might be willing to ‘lead’. In other words, they would have to be comfortable enough with the technology to be able to lead a mini-training session off-the-cuff upon finding out what people want to learn.

Step 4 TOPIC SYNTHESIS:

The volunteer group gathers all the ideas. Then as a group try to organize all related ideas into as few categories as possible. It ok to merge ideas together, reword, etc. but try to get the ideas into a reasonably-sized list under each category. So, maybe you reduced everything down to 5 categories, with 5-10 ideas under each. Volunteers Take 15 minutes max to do this. It does not have to be perfect.

Step 5: TOPIC SELECTION:

• VOTE: Each attendee, including volunteers, now get 3 ‘votes’ for their favorite top ideas. (or whatever number, but keep it low so people have to make a choice). For in-person, the topic ideas will be posted on 4 separate walls, spread out so everyone can read and vote at the same time. For voting, pass out small stickers(.i.e. stars) to everyone. People browse the room and put stickers on the ideas they support. No rules on how people apply their votes. Take 15 minutes max to do this.
• SET AGENDA: Volunteers meet for the last time to put the ideas into order based on votes. Ideally, they are spread out across categories, so you can take the top 3 from each category, or make whatever “executive decisions” that need to be made. It is OK to merge ideas together if it helps. Complete the public agenda with the selected topics. Make the agenda available to the attendees.

Sample 3-hour agenda

(8:00 – 8:15) 15 min Gathering and Greeting and Ice breakers
(8:15 – 8:30) 15 min Ideation
(8:30 -8:45) 15 min Topic Condensing
(8:45 – 9:00) 15 min Topic Selection
(9:15-10:00) 45 min Session 1 (topics A, B, C)
15 min Break
(10:15-11:00) 45 min Session 2( (topics D, E, F)
15 min Break
(11:15-12:00) 45 Session 3 (topics G, H, I)
Lunch

Step 6: Learn.

Make sure people know that they are free to roam from session to session, even if it means leaving a session mid-stream.

Learn with your Feet. If you get into a session and it is not what you needed or not what you hoped, or you really want to catch part of another simultaneous session, then leave–just get up and go. No explanation is needed. No one is “watching”. It’s not an insult to anyone. Go where you get the most value. Contribute where you can the most.

What happens next?
Well, you have placed the learning and training into the hands of the people. Why not let the people decide what happens next? Is specific follow-up training needed? Do some work-related procedures or policies need to be re-visited? Did new ideas arise that need to be fleshed out? In other words, let “what happens next” depend on what happens in the training.

The world of online learning has taken the world by storm over the last several years. One of the questions we struggle with is, “How do we create effective online learning?”

It’s simple: Address the why before the how.

In any learning, this is the most important element. Without question. No exceptions. Mic Drop.

After the why, we can then dive into the what and how.

While some may tell you that it is the skills that are most important in learning, they are wrong. It is all about pedagogy and the learning environment, and ultimately–the learner.

There are 6 major areas that must be addressed in e-learning:

• Motivation for learning
• Relevance of learning
• Bite-sized learning
• Hands-on learning
• Resources for learning
• Community around learning

Motivation
Motivation is not external. You cannot motivate learners, but you can provide a learning experience that allows them to discover their own motivation. Buy-in is real and matters. And it is vital for learning.

There are 2 possible reasons learners are spending time with your learning.

• Want: learners are here voluntarily and are already motivated, or at least willing to become motivated. In this scenario, it is a different game. You don’t need to convince them to learn, but you will need to provide reasons to continue when it gets hard. Take advantage of that raw energy and eagerness and dive in immediately. The only danger now is not providing engaging learning, and they lose interest. Shame on us if this happens.
• Need: Design interesting scenarios where the obvious solution involves the skills and ideas of the learning. Let learners see that there is a definite need for these skills. There is clear value in them spending time on this learning.  Get them excited and amazed at what they can do with the learning. Then design learning to guide them through scaffolded steps where they build their learning and motivation steadily.

This is why the connection a student has with a course is so important. An engaging, genuine, and enthusiastic instructor, whether live or recorded, helps build that connection.  That connection will expand to include everything about the course, including the content and skills.

Relevance
It must be crystal clear how this learning relates to the world, but not just any world, the world the learner is in right now. Know your learners: are they mid-career professionals looking to get ahead, are they inexperienced but ambitious young professionals building up their resume, business leaders looking to learn more about an industry, people just looking to learn enough just to get started, or are they just discovering learning for the first time. Use examples, stories, and demonstrations that clearly demonstrate the skills, ideas, and concepts in action. Target your audience;  giving an example of a factory quality assurance system is not the real world for college students. In the same light, using TikTok examples is not going to appeal to your senior leaders.

Bite-sized learning
You have to take high-level and abstract ideas and break them down into smaller chunks that have meaning to the student. They have to incrementally see how the skill or topic applies to the world around them in real ways. But there is something we have to be careful of, called cognitive load, which in essence means you cannot just keep cramming information down their throat all at once. Break it up, and give them chances to digest, synthesize, explore, and review. Provide frequent practice and activities to interact with the content and make sure to intentionally incorporate previously learned skills from earlier lessons. Blending existing knowledge (recent and long-term) with new learning is a powerful way to increase retention.

Hands-On
The days of passive lecture are long gone. Learning must be two-way, where the student is doing things and getting feedback throughout, not just at the end. Interactive learning is used for both basic knowledge as well as application of knowledge. There must be opportunities to demonstrate their learning, yes to a possible employer or boss, but more so just to themselves.  That practice and application helps “store” their new learning in a different area of their brain. Simply providing recorded videos with some questions at the end will not reach your students, and will rarely be effective. It’s ok to use a quiz or test as part of the learning, but practice and demonstration must play a much larger part.  Use interactive and animated visuals;  be especially sure not to just display and describe them, but include some interactions or activities that let students apply what they see in the visual. That can be done through both objective and open-ended questions.

Community
Research shows us that even in virtual learning, students want some sense of community. Find ways to let learners interact with other learners. This can be a student discussion board, social media group, peer feedback, or even online office hours with the course leader. When I was doing my online master’s degree at Ga Tech, I drove several hours just to work together with a group partner for an evening. Is that logical? No. Was it necessary? Yes.

Resources
Students will learn on their own, just as they are in your course. You have to replace having an instructor in a room to whom they can ask questions. Anticipate the questions students will ask, and prepare examples and demonstrations for different levels of understanding.  Scaffold the learning enough so you can prepare for common questions, sticking points, and confusion. You will have students lost right at the start, and you will have advanced students getting stuck much farther along. People need different types of learning and resources at different points in their learning journey. Provide a variety of learning including video, audio, text, diagrams, and animations to explain concepts and teach skills.

You have to make sure that they have information that can help them work through their problems as they are working through the course. I can’t emphasize enough the power of great resources.

There you have it. E-learning can be engaging and effective. In truth, the elements I introduced in this article translate directly into any type of learning.