I couldn't let Clive Shepherd's posting How to do better creative work (of about a month ago) pass me by for too long. There's little in Steve Harrison's book of the same name that's radically new, but it is wonderfully well expressed. I particularly like:

"If you set out to win awards you won't have a snowball in hell's chance of doing something that works. And, of yes, you'll be out of a job in six months."

...those of you revelling in the recent (and very enjoyable) e-learning Age awards beware.  

He also talks about slowing down and letting ideas incubate. So...rapid e-learning? Hmmmm.

I also thought I'd throw in one of my favourite observations from Funky Business, which describes responding to client needs as a "driving using your rear-view mirror".

But seriously, the need for creativity in e-learning is a severe challenge for us all. It's damned difficult coming up with new ideas when there's so much time pressure, when our (very understandable)professional and commercial insecurity leads us towards extrinsic motivators (like awards...), and when clients, in their insecurity continually ask us to do the safe thing.

BUT - other, more highly paid, more highly regarded industries manage it. And so should we.

I was very struck – no, quite moved – by a short piece by Alain de Botton in Monocle magazine. Describing the modern corporation, he says:

“...it has managed to cut us off from people and things. We can no longer see what we have made or whom we have touched; we frequently can’t stand back...and say “I did that” or “I changed him or her”.

De Botton describes our need to see what we have done; feel our impact on the world.

He’s actually describing large corporations, and in his terms, a typical e-learning agency would be a small business. But in my experience, I think he could equally be talking about many e-learning agencies. What seems to have happened in most, but not all, such agencies, is that during the good times, the attraction of scaling up and industrialising production processes was too great. It didn’t matter that the majority of the people working in such agencies became alienated from their end-users and clients; that they became little whirring cogs in over-complex machines with little notion of what they were attempting to achieve; that they had little sense of responsibility for changing people, and a weak sense of ownership for their contribution to the whole.   

But the bad times are exposing this model as costly and ineffective. Creative, efficient e-learning producers in the future will be made up not of a large number of specialists, most of whom have little contact with clients and users, but of generalists, all of whom have constant contact with users and clients. They will be led by designers and producers, not driven by technologists and project managers. As software rapidizes, the need for highly technically trained staff, and large teams, is reducing fast. I can now produce a high quality, creative e-learning course in a few days, a 3D immersive game in just over a week...as long as we keep the team tiny and use the right tools; as long as I prototype rather than specify; as long as I seek simplicity and nail complexity wherever it arises.

I know that what I produce is good, because I’m in constant contact with clients and users - and they tell me it is. And the best thing is that I don’t feel alienated from the people I’m trying to help, and the people I’m collaborating with. It’s rewarding personally, it’s lucrative and it works.

I've heard so many stories about grey-haired senior execs who still get their secretaries to print out their emails because they don't have a computer on their own desk. Senior level techno-luddism is still often blamed as the source of resistance to new learning methods. I think this is increasingly a comforting fallacy for us.

This article in the Independent suggests that business schools, while not exactly at the forefront of learning technology, are being pragmatic and innovating when they need to. As it says:

"The current generation of college student has never known a time before cell phones and personal computers. They are eager to use technology to enhance their learning."

And there's research to show that students actually learned better using their mobile devices than if they'd sat in a lecture. 

One group attended the live class, the other listened via podcast. When given a test on the subject a week later, the podcast group scored 71 per cent while the in-class group scored 62 per cent. 

The current generation of MBAs from highly regarded business schools like Warwick are likely to be the next generation of senior execs. If they're getting accustomed to "new" learning methods, it can only be a matter of time before they are putting pressure on us to be more innovative. This can only be a good thing, but we'd better be ready...

Thanks to Cathy Moore for an excellent LSG webinar on her Action Mapping method.

What really strikes me is that the process is just such damned common sense - albeit very nicely visually articulated. I am asking myself (the webinar is still in progress as I'm writing) why it is necessary to still have this explained to us. But clearly it is necessary when you see most e-learning, overburdened as it is with "stuff" (content). 

There are various reasons why we're overburdened with content, rather than focussing on creating change in people, and these are principally in the areas of SME/client inexperience and inappropriate expectation. Until we overcome these - and Cathy's method is just one tool in our tool-box for this - we'll be stuck where we are. As I've said in various places, clients need educating probably more than learners!

It also occurs to me that this kind of action-focussed approach can only lead towards scenarios/sims/games - or at worst, story-based and case-based "courses". It simply cannot be supported by the current generation of page-based tools and methods...which on the whole is a very good thing. Thanks again Cathy.

I'm seeing a lot of my views about design reflected in the BBC's excellent Design for Life series. And leaving aside the awkward truth that the young designers in the series appear rather weak, this kind of episodic documentary storytelling is something we in the e-learning business should aim to do more of.

For example, I've learned as much about the reality of business decision-making from Dragons Den as I did from my MBA, and my various attempts at property development owe their (admittedly mixed) success to Property Ladder, as to any training I've had or books I've read. Deliberately or not, these TV shows build in many of the "learning functions" and activities that I see so rarely in e-learning, including: paced repetition, goal-setting, emotion, presentation of opposing views, evaluation of options, situation, summaries...and so on. They draw me in and seduce me to be concerned about what's going on, at least for a short while. Above all, they proceed from the specific (the story) to the general (theory), not the other way round. And not an "interaction" in sight. 

Specifically, Design for Life reflects some important facets of design process and thinking that I don't see very often in the e-learning field:

• Design is about getting under the user's skin: in the episode I've linked to, one designer tapes up his eyes and goes for a walk in the middle of Paris so that he can feel what his blind users experience. How often do learning designers even meet their users, let alone try to get a sense of their feelings?
• Design involves bringing who you are to the party; it's about personal expression. It's not an objective, cold science. We know from many design professions that people who express who they are in their work are better designers.
• Design concepts need to be articulated visually. How much text do these designers produce in their presentations? Not much. There are no weighty specification documents, but visual boards and prototypes instead - right from the start.
• Design is about creating experiences, not "content". I've said enough on this elsewhere... 
• Design is a messy, troubled, unpredictable process, not a mechanistic flow of predictable steps.

If we're interested in learning from other design professions (whose members are, on average more highly qualified, better paid and have access to larger budgets than we do), then I suggest Design for Life is a worthwhile piece of CPD.