This came to mind when I was reading Kate Graham's interesting post, part of which deals with how we - learning technology advocates - attract the attention of execs in organisations. My first response was something along the lines of "well...the reason they don't pay attention is because out in the real world, e-learning's reputation is at best patchy...e-learning is regarded as something you have to do if real training isn't available". So, I know this is a bit unfair. And I know that there's research that shows we're not doing too badly, but I've still to meet anyone, in any non-training environment or organisation who, when I say I'm an e-learning consultant says a) I know what that is and b) that they really approve of what e-learning is and does. Most still regard it is an obligation and a pain.

So is it all about providing compelling business arguments for execs? I'm not sure. Over the years we've heard so many gurus talking about how to take a more business-focussed approach to training. We've read so many times about having to provide business metrics relating to effectiveness of learning. Sometimes this works. But I wonder whether we're attributing to these senior folks more pure rationality than is typically the case. Of course business arguments matter; they're necessary. But I don't think they're sufficient. Just trivialising my argument a little, think about how many investments are made by Dragons Den investors on purely emotional grounds. Think about how Alan Sugar makes his decisions. Purely data-driven? Not really...

What's going to sell learning technologies to senior execs is when they themselves feel it working and changing their own lives; when it's integrated into how they learn. The amount spent per person on senior exec training is a completely different order from those elsewhere in organisations (perhaps as disproportionate as their salaries). Yet e-learning barely touches them. Most e-learning providers aren't set up to sell high level solutions, and most training departments in organisations don't equate learning technology to senior level training. Change starts at the top.

Thing is, I reckon it ain't all their fault. It's not just a supply problem. There are two sources of demand that prevent many, many HR and training departments from moving forward into social, integrated, workplace learning.

Firstly, my experience in a number of organisations suggests that many people - it feels like a big majority - still regard learning as something that's done to them. Just this morning I heard on the radio an interviewee saying that she'd not attempt a particular procedure because she'd "not been trained yet" i.e. an event had not yet occurred, which it was not her responsiblity to arrange, in which information was passed from an expert to others. Those of us who've been banging on about the shift from training to learning, from formal to informal...and so on, for so many years, sometimes underestimate - particuarly in these difficult economic times when so many people feel insecure - how much of a mindset shift it is to get people grabbing responsiblity for achieving their work tasks through learning. If training people do have a long-term role (and I hope they do because it's still a little while before I can afford to retire) then it's got to centre around facilitating learning-to-learn skills in people. And much of this is about shifting the hearts and minds of those millions of normal folks who have been conditioned to take a passive role in their learning. Of course, what used to be called "digital natives" - the highly networked, multi-tasking generations now moving into and up the workforce - will look after themselves. Their hunger for knowledge and sense of personal ownership reminds me more of piranha fish than trainees. 

The second source of demand for good ol' training from the HR and training folks is "the business" - those who typically provide funds for training. They may not often respect training people, but they continue to have problems grasping quite where learning fits in the organisation, if it's not in the quiet offices of the HR and training department. I can't even count the number of times I've been involved in trying to widen the perspective of a project sponsor but have been knocked back because, as non-experts in learning, they won't accept arguments in favour of less immediately tangible approaches.

Changing these sources of demand require significant cultural shifts. But the learning industry should be able to help, shouldn't we, because we're all about changing people, aren't we...?

But in general the e-learning industry has a poor record of dashing headlong after new fashions - led by technologists and salesmen – without considering learning or business benefits.  I’m really hoping that we don’t drag mobile learning through another e-learning hype cycle although I fear we might. What concerns me is that once again we may be transferring the characteristics and methods of one medium, in this case “static” e-learning, to another: mobile learning. We’re probably also repeating the error of confusing information delivery, whether presented interactively or not, with learning.

Much of the discussion around mobile learning concerns “delivering information at the point of need”. This is great and can have real value. If I want to show a customer around a new car, or consult with a sick patient, or find out the financial needs of a new client, there’s a lot to remember and having information at my finger-tips can be crucial. But if that’s all we use mobile learning for, we’re missing a lot of the potential value creation. Andy Clark, in “Natural Born Cyborgs” talks about how, as humans, we’re innately well-suited to extending our cognitive functions through the use of tools; of integrating these tools into what we are, and how we think and act. This seems to me where mobile learning can really work. So rather than regarding mobile devices as means of delivering or accessing information, and of the information as a prompt for learning, we can think of these devices as extended parts of ourselves; as cognitive tools to help us think and behave differently. Academics like David Jonassen have written a lot about this kind of thing, but in the real world at least some of their recommendations have been constrained because the kinds of tools they talk about have often been tied down to static locations. This is no longer the case.

So what would mobile cognitive tools be like? They'd probably be open-ended, user-controlled, obviously highly interactive; possibly light on information - because learners/users will provider that - and loosely structured. They'll resemble the many tool-like apps we have on our smartphones and tablets, rather than mimic typical e-learning courses. Like our smartphone apps, they'll integrate into how we live and work, rather than remove us from our work in order to “learn”. And they'll probably be created by product designers, not instructional designers.

At a superficial level the answer to the artist’s question is obvious: they give pleasure, offer ideas, spontaneity and new perspectives on problems…and so on. But it occurred to me recently that the real value they offer lies at a deeper level. There are at least a two characteristics of truly creative artists that offer great value to businesses and organizations.

Firstly, good artists are intrinsically motivated. In other words, they love what they do. If they didn’t love what they do, they could make things but they couldn’t be creative. Indeed, various academics, such as Teresa Amabile, have shown us that not only is intrinsic motivation critical for creativity, but that extrinsic motivation (bonuses, money, rewards) actually reduces the quality of creativity. However much you reward a person to be creative, if they don’t love what they’re doing, they won’t hack it. This has all sorts of implications for organizations in terms of resourcing and reward systems; implications that run counter to a lot of accepted management wisdoms.

Secondly, good artists are courageous. Robert Sternberg, in his Investment theory of creativity, compares creative artists to investors who put their money into new ideas when they’re not popular, then build on them in order to gather the returns. Good artists do this largely intuitively. Gambling on new ideas in the face of ignorance, opposition and indifference requires courage. One of the main benefits I’ve seen in bringing artists together with business people is when an artist demonstrates the courage to just get started; to work with a blank sheet of paper, or a block of wood, or a silent musical instrument, and make something out of nothing. There’s no project plan, no mission statement, no goal, no reporting structure.

So what? Well the world’s in a mess. In the last few years it's become a cliché in management circles that in order to solve our problems we have to do something different; that old solutions won’t work. But today’s most urgent problems – financial meltdown, environmental degradation, political corruption to name just a few – need utterly new approaches and world views. Obviously we’ll never return to “business as usual”, and neither would we want to given what the term “business” has lately come to imply.

To stop our downward spiral – fear, leading to doing the same old thing, leading to failure – we could learn a lot from good artists.

Having made such a fuss about creativity for so long, this time last year I decided to push the boat out and see what it’s like trying to earn money as a creative artist and musician. I expanded my digital art activity, started doing more paid musical gigs and set out on a masters degree in “creative sound and media technology”, while attempting to keep my e-learning business going (we all like a safety net, don’t we?).

Being semi-detached from the e-learning industry and immersing myself in so much creative work has provided me with some new perspectives.

Firstly, because a very large amount of e-learning deals with pretty simple, low-level stuff, a very large proportion of it doesn’t need much creativity. I think I’ve certainly fallen into the trap highlighted by Clive Shepherd where he talks about “over-engineering for information transfer”, although I’d probably call it “over-designing”. Having worked with some wildly creative people over the last year or so, I reckon this over-designing is at least partly the frustrated creative artist coming out. Creative people are rarely able to contain themselves when they see an opportunity for personal expression. The diagram is a quick attempt to try to highlight where we need more creative approaches, and where we don’t.

Secondly, what on earth is “creativity” anyway? Academics tend to define it as consisting of two components: novelty and relevance. This means that something can’t be “creative” if it’s incredibly novel, but irrelevant or useless. These days I’m pulled in two directions on this. On the one hand, so much of the digital art and music I’ve come across is stunningly novel...and...so obscure, conceptual and complex that I can’t even begin to comprehend it. So it’s not relevant, at least to me. Yet even where it remains utterly opaque to me, it can provide the basis for further thoughts, ideas and wanderings. OK – so that’s creative then. On the other hand, if somebody slaps some cosmetic “creative” work on the front of an otherwise dull e-learning course in order to grab the learner’s attention, presumably that’s not creative is it? It can’t be if it’s not relevant. I remain, constructively confused but more open minded than I was.

Finally, I had the privilege of judging some of the e-learning Age awards this year. And I was really impressed by the level of creativity. I don’t mean in some high art, or even advertising agency kind of way. I was just struck by how people had used a wide range of tools, been ingenious in their application and achieved things that worked. Very much novelty and relevance, within their own context. It seems to me that the rapidisation of so much software – something I’ve talked a lot about in the past – has allowed people to try things out, mess about constructively and find creative ways of dealing with the learning challenges they face. Large-scale, old-fashioned industrial (instructional?) design processes militate against creativity; putting creative tools in the hands of people enhances creativity.



This is true interaction with presenters. It keeps my mind and fingers active and I recall far more; I make far more meaning than if I sit there and take notes. The only drawback is that I'm shattered at the end of the day but that's because my brain has been more fully engaged.

This came to mind when I read How Twitter in the Classroom is Boosting Student Engagement, although it feels like this article is emphasising quantity of students rather than quality of interaction. It's the richer quality of interaction that I love about my conference tweeting.

But a theme throughout is that so-called "old ways of thinking", and by extension, old ways of training and learning, won't get us out of the mess that we have got into.

I'm also intrigued by the notion that, as arts budgets are cut beyond the bone, artists are being cajoled to be more "business like" if they are to survive. Isn't the point here that we got into this mess because the old ways of doing business screwed up, leading to financial crisis, leading to cuts...So don't businesses need to be more creative - dare I say it, more artistic - not the other way round?

Power of culture - how to inject culture into business strategy from Arts & Business on Vimeo.

And here's the full paper(pdf) - very interesting.

A long time ago, in the last century, marketeers used to fixate on big social groups: "the working class", or "south westerners" or "baby boomers", because I guess they thought most people in these big groups shared enough characteristics that is was worth aiming specific messages at them.

Then they got cleverer: they started using postcodes, and this allowed them to target products, services and messages much more precisely. But actually that's pretty dumb too, even if it's taken down to the street level. Where I used to live in London we had bankers, builders, solicitors, decorators, a solitary e-learning consultant (me), teachers, the odd villain or two, the keyboard player from the band Athlete, students...what on earth did we have in common? If I came up with a product - or an e-learning course - for this group, how would I tailor it to accommodate such diversity?

Tesco's, as with so much in life, have the answer. They don't care where I live, what social grouping I'm in...they just know what I like to eat (and wear, and listen to, read, and smell of...). To them, I'm a unique market of one.

Indeed, personalisation is one of the great themes of our time. If you've not seen this already, have a look at what Jesse Schell says about this on slideshare and youtube. If you don't fancy listening to a manic north american futurologist and gaming genius, go to your local park and have a look at the scooters kids are riding. Every one will be completely different, utterly customised, right down to the colours of the bolts on the wheels. To these kids the world is incredibly granular; tiny chunks to be assembled just as they want them to be.

The central point here is not that people may or may not learn in different ways, but that any method that puts people into really big groups doesn't work (any more...did it ever...really?). It's one of those wonderful contradictions that as the development of community, and community action and direction becomes central to how society works, so our individualism and our uniqueness become more important.

So...we live in an era where creativity and innovation are critical for survival. And we've known for a long time - thanks to work by researchers like Amabile - that external rewards are usually a great way of preventing both. People need to love what they do in order to be creative.

There's an e-learning angle here too. Pretty deeply embedded in the majority of corporate e-learning is the notion of compulsion. You have to complete stuff, then pass a quiz, or you'll be sanctioned in some way. Trouble is, that's a guaranteed way of ensuring that people don't learn; they have to be intrinsically motivated and really enjoy what they're doing, unless you're dealing with the most trivial of learning challenges.

I'm wondering whether there's a cultural theme here too. North American management theory (and therefore learning) is still in its post-behaviourist recovery period. Some of the "revelations" we sometimes hear about in other parts of the world don't seem quite so surprising from our perspective. Carrots and sticks don't work with high level skills eh? Er...I'm not sure that would be too much of a shock for your average German industrialist.

Anyway - an excellent video (non-interactive, audio driven, e-learning...) noneless. If you've not seen it, it's worth the 10 minutes.