Making Learning Fun!

This month’s LCBQ is “How do you make e-learning fun?” 
I begin with a quote by British novelist, Arnold Bennett who said, "There can be no knowledge without emotion. We may be aware of a truth, yet until we have felt its force, it is not ours. To the cognition of the brain must be added the experience of the soul."
I believe this quote sums up all the reasons why we should include emotions – not just fun - into our learning interventions – e-learning or any learning for that matter.

But before I explore the idea of including fun in learning, it is important for me to share that poorly designed learning with lots of fun is never a good learning object. Point being, including fun does not lead to a powerful learning impact, if all other design principles are not adhered to. Also, all types of learning need not always be fun. Other emotions should be explored and included that allow the designer to teach the subject in the most sensitive and realistic manner.

Assuming that we have the right subject and the correct instructional design principles in place, fun can be the missing ingredient that our audience looks for. But we need to appreciate that everyone's idea of fun may be different. Perhaps, in this post, I am focussed on 'engaging my audience' and therefore attempting to make the training fun for them.

Here are my top 5 methods of creating engagement and ensuring fun in the training I design and deliver. Since much has been written about these topics and none needs explanation, I share my views here using quotes that sum up the methods brilliantly!

1)   Use stories. "Thought flows in terms of stories -- stories about events, stories about people, and stories about intentions and achievements. The best teachers are the best storytellers. We learn in the form of stories." - Frank Smith

2)   Use emotions. “Good teaching is one-fourth preparation and three-fourths theatre.” - Gail Godwin

3)   Make learners do activities. "What I hear, I forget. What I see, I remember. What I do, I understand." – Confucius

4)   Make learners think. “I like a teacher who gives you something to take home to think about besides homework.”  - Lily Tomlin as "Edith Ann"

5)   Motivate and inspire learners. "The mediocre teacher tells. The good teacher explains. The superior teacher demonstrates. The great teacher inspires." - William Arthur Ward

 

There are many tools and technologies available to an e-learning designer that can help implement these methods. Scenario-based learning, Gaming, Second life, Web 2.0 tools are all options that can be utilized effectively.

In my opinion, making any learning fun is more about the use of underlying instructional strategies than the front-facing tool. Yes, it can perhaps be a little more challenging in e-learning than in face-to-face instruction, but it is possible!

Breaking Free From Organizational Walls

The #LCBQ for June is:
How do we break down organizational walls when it comes to learning?

Here are the top 5 actions that can help in breaking down organization silos and promote learning:

1) Foster collaboration across teams, departments, businesses.

There are invisible boundaries across teams and departments. Businesses have more visible boundaries. Most departments and businesses may have clashing goals too. To break these silos and to foster learning, it is important to move away from the traditional vertical structure and create common goals that can be achieved by working together. A more horizontal, 'end-to-end' solution-based structure encourages teams, departments, and businesses to contribute their part to the overall solution and get a chance to interact with each other and learn to work together. Cross departmental pilot teams can also work together to innovate and create new products or services. This cross-functional exposure develops critical competencies across a larger group and avoids the traps of one group getting over-specialized.

2) Identify experts and provide access to these experts.

It is important for us to know our individual strengths so we can leverage those at the right time. In the same way, it is important for an organization to identify its expertise and people who posses this expertise. These experts should be identified clearly, accessible readily and especially at the time of a crisis. Problem-solving and troubleshooting tends to bring people together in ways that encourage open communication, learning from mistakes, and the ability to identify best practices by sharing knowledge. All of which are priceless ingredients to a successful learning story. Besides, Web2.0 tools can bring these experts closer to the point of need than ever before.

3) Create dedicated physical and online spaces that encourage social learning.

It is useful for people to know that there is a space - physical or online - that is dedicated to promote communication and learning. I remember, my last organization had a room called 'The Innovation Room'. The environment and decor of the room was inviting; no formal seating arrangements, bean bags, white boards, and empty flip charts. And I can proudly say, we did get together in that room to innovate - a lot. The space gave us the freedom to ideate as a group in a non-threatening environment. The same concept can be replicated online to provide online discussion forums that break the boundaries of hierarchy and structure. Social learning and learning from customers and partners should be encouraged and promoted.

4) Create a common, unifying organization culture that promotes learning.

To encourage a culture of sharing at an individual level, it is important for the management to develop this culture first at the organizational level. One of the ways to create this culture is to have uniform processes and practices that provide access to data and information in a transparent manner. By sharing data and information in a transparent manner, individuals and teams are encouraged to share their knowledge more readily and this avoids the hoarding tendency. 

5) All employees should be agents of learning.

To promote continuous learning, it is important that we continuously be at it. It is not enough to apply the first four points. Perhaps, the most important aspect is to have internal agents that promote such a learning culture in everyday situations. In an ideal world, all employees should be agents of learning. But a few always begin first. Everyone should use their position, authority and/or influence to motivate peers and subordinates to learn from each other. As influencers, you should emphasis critical values that help break silos - open communication, achievement of common goals, and knowledge-sharing. These values are far more important than personal expertise or individual success.

Addressing On-Demand Learning Needs

 

The #LCBQ for May is:

How do we need to change in what we do in order to address learning/performance needs that are on-demand?

In order to answer this question, I think it is important to first identify and understand the nature of learning and performance needs that are 'on-demand'. The way I look at it, only when we apply knowledge, we really learn. I don't think we would make an effort to learn anything, if we did not have the need to apply the knowledge at a specific time in a specific situation in the present or future. This basically means all learning/performance needs are on-demand. This demand may be current or in the future.

With this premise, here are the top 3 things that I think we should do in order to address the learning/performance needs:

1) Identify when, where and how the learning will be required and design it accordingly.

Consider a case where a learner is new to a particular software used for enterprise resource planning in the organization. Here is a situation where the learner is struggling with what option to select in a dialog box. Now, what kind of learning does the learner need at that time, sitting on the desk? What should be included in this learning? And how should this information or knowledge be made available?

   

The typical answer is that the learner should have been formally trained in using this software in perhaps a classroom training environment. This training should have prepared the learner with the typical features and benefits of the software and described various dialog boxes and options.

The truth is however, far from this. The learner is sitting on the desk, stuck in the middle of a task, and needs to know exactly which option to select in the dialog box – and the learner needs this information right now! At this time, the learner is not concerned about various features and benefits of the software. Perhaps, a better approach would be to provide a performance support tool in the form of a job-aid that lists what option needs to be selected in which particular situation. This job-aid can be pinned to the board and the learner can refer to it, when required.

 

Maybe this example is close to your life – maybe it is far. The bottom-line is that any learning solution we create must consider the work environment in which the learners realize they have a need for learning and need to apply the learning. It is in this environment that truly all learning should happen, which in most cases is the actual workplace or workflow.

As Gary Wise says, we need to understand and appreciate the learner’s context in terms of time, space, and media. In his article titled ‘The Continuous Learning Environment: Surviving Learning Solution Discovery’, Gary says:

  

“There are three categories of attributes within the learning environment:

· Space– a blend of physical location, workflow, risk, and urgency

· Media– the most compelling mix of mode and venue

· Systems– the most effective and efficient application of technology

All the attributes that fall under space, media, and systems combine to drive or restrain design decisions. It is essential to define these attributes to ensure the learning solution delivers on one global objective, which is to enable a sustained capability.”

 

In the same light, it is important to realize that our learning needs are not big chunks of knowledge and information. Perhaps, we need access to knowledge and background information in large amounts but we need the ‘learning’ in small chunks. Therefore, the design of learning should also be small, modular and bit-sized so that it can be provided in a format that allows us to give it just-in-time and just-enough.

  

2) Design continuous learning solutions not individual training programs.

   

All work is continuous, so should be all learning. Whether we realize it or not, we are learning all the time. A continuous learning solution, therefore explores various dimensions of the learner’s environment including formal, informal, and social learning contexts. We need to stop thinking that formal classroom training is the solution to all performance problems. We need to realize that we learn and retain our daily troubleshooting scenarios far more than any theoretical lectures that we attend in a classroom. We also need to realize that we are learn much more from being involved and active and by making mistakes and solving problems.

Therefore, when designing learning, we must move away from our tendency to think unidirectional and shy away from proposing only one form of training. We must explore other interventions such as coaching, mentoring, and blended learning. These solutions can be a blend of classroom, online, mobile learning, social learning and performance support tools. The idea is to explore and design learning interventions by exploiting various dimensions of the learner’s environment.

3) Focus training efforts and budgets into the 'informal learning' piece of the pie.

Josh Bersin of Bersin & Associates from a July 2009 webinar, ‘Future of the Business of Learning’ explained that we have approximately 2080 work hours in a year. From this, we spend about 100 hours in some type of formal learning activity or training. This is approximately 5% of the total available work hours. We spend the remaining 95% of our time doing actual work and in informal learning activities. However, all training budgets continue to focus on the 5% slice of the pie. It is time to therefore consciously focus on this informal learning piece of the pie and design learning solutions by capitalizing on this environment.

  

Retaining theories after a 3-day classroom training is much tougher than recalling the best possible solution that was applied within a challenging work situation. When we go out to ‘attend’ a training event, we are unable to retain more than 10-20% of what we learnt after 30 days. However, if we learn and apply something within the work situation, we are more likely to recall the learning at a future date. Our learning solutions should therefore remove the barriers between formal and informal and let all interventions permeate and become an integral part of our daily work life and workflow. It is time to realize that work = learning and learning = work. Without learning, there is no work and without work, there is no learning.