There are other clues.

One of them is ISD/learning design-by-numbers. Just as Donald says that surely, if we'd really been a profession, we'd have questioned some lovely neat numbers like "we remember 10% of what we read...", surely if we were a profession we'd come around to some kind of realisation that neat-'n-tidy learning design processes could never have worked, when it really matters.

Here's a presentation I've done a few times. It's slightly mischievously called "The 7 principles of 21st Century Learning Design". See what you think.

But here's the presentation anyway. It's not particularly self-explanatory, so do get in contact if you want to know more about it. Alternatively, I understand there will be a video of the presentation on the Learning Technologies site at some point.

What I've found in giving these talks is that there's quite a bit of interest in expanding them into workshops. So that's what I've done. I've currently got one called "A creative tune-up for learning designers" (outline here), and another, based on yesterday's talk, called not suprisingly "Re-learning learning design".

I've not been blogging for the last few months because a number of personal issues got in the way. But many thanks to Clive Shepherd yesterday who introduced my session and, whether he meant to or not, encouraged me to re-start.

Anyway - there's a new beta release of spacetime, a tool I posted about a while ago. Basically, it's a 3D browsing interface. I love it. The reason that a sizeable proportion of potential users will share my view is because 3D games have trained them to expect this level of engagement, flexibility and downright aesthetic gorgeousness. This kind of thing is likely to become the default style fairly shortly (see the music functions in the new ipod, for example). We'll look back with amusement, and wonder why on earth we put up with 2D representations of data for so long.

This is probably a gross generalisation, but I reckon that in the web/new media marketing mainstream, there’s a lot more in common between suppliers and clients. Web marketing staff in large organisations often come from agency or advertising backgrounds, and many agency staff develop their careers by moving in and out of large organisations. Quite often, both sides have common professional qualifications and experience. And as a result, they usually speak more or less the same language. Of course, many problems and misunderstandings arise (because they’re human too…), but the relative maturity and scale of their industry provides some kind of common ground.

I don’t think that’s the case in the e-learning industry. I’m often struck by how very different suppliers and buyers are, culturally, in terms of background, qualifications…it’s sometimes feels like we’re speaking from opposites sides of a deep echoing chasm and only catching the occasional word that’s shouted across the void. We’re a young industry with barely a common vocabulary and culture even amongst the fragmented suppliers of e-learning products and services.

So what? Well, I love 2 x 2 matrixes (some would say “putting people in boxes”, but I’d say that’s only so I can ignore them). And here’s another one.

Let’s imagine that you can map people involved in e-learning along a couple of dimensions. The first one is all about knowledge of the reality, the parameters, the constraints of what e-learning can and can’t do. So if you’re a supplier of e-learning products and services, you should probably be on the high end of the dimension: you have a good knowledge of the constraints. On the other hand, while many buyers within large organisations are up there at that end as well, a substantial proportion are not. They simply (and understandably, given their roles and experience) don’t know enough about what e-learning can and can’t do; what it can and cannot be.

I’ve taken the other dimension from various theories of personality and of creative thinking. I’ve found that many in the industry (on both sides) have what you might call a “convergent” orientation or mindset. They like things sorted out, organised, precision-engineered. They start from a problem and converge, through a process of logical analysis, to a single solution. Traditional instructional systems design encourages this, and many of the values surrounding instructional design support it. And it’s certainly a necessary orientation in many cases.

But not all. Others I encounter are more divergent. They dislike organisation and disciplined process and linear thinking. They head off from a single point and diverge. At the extreme, (unless they’re aware of the constraints) they need the convergent types to help bring things to a conclusion (apply your Belbin or MBTI types here if you want). These types are great when you’re looking for new solutions, which incidentally, is what I think the e-learning industry needs to do more of.

So what happens if you map the two dimensions against each other? Probably just another bullsh*t matrix, pseudo-tool. But it may have some use. I’m just wondering whether something like this might help improve relationships between suppliers and buyers. Awareness, as they say, is curative. See what you think.

So much e-learning that I review is one-paced. It moves along without any great forethought about how quickly a learner will move through it, whether they're interacting or not, how deeply (or not) they need to be engaged, and above all, how this changes over time, in relation to the general flow of events.

This is partly a symptom of the learning object/atomisation/fragmentation disease that infects a lot of learning design thinking, but it's also a misunderstanding about the nature of interactivity. A lot of the debate about interactivity assumes that it is Necessarily A Good Thing. "We'd like our learning to be interactive" I hear so many clients request. Well - interaction is just one part of the jigsaw. Completely non-interactive digital stories can be supremely engaging and wonderfully educational, as of course, can good documentaries. Interactivity is just one way of manipulating pace.

So - here's the appeal. A while ago I produced this simple tool, based on the work of Mark Iliff at PwC in the late 90s. But I think it's out of date now, and too simple. What I'm looking for is a more visual tool of some sort that I can use to help learning designers map out flows - learner journeys - through e-learning offerings more clearly.

Does anyone know of anything? Would anyone like to work with me on producing one?

Am I barking up the wrong tree? Again.

Poor old "creativity"; it's got such a bad name, mainly because of widespread misunderstandings of what it is. I'll not repeat what I've said elsewhere on this site. But the key points that tend to be misunderstood about creativity are generally around relevance ("be as creative as you like, but make sure the ideas are relevant") and exclusivity ("take that suit and tie off, and then you're allowed to be creative").

One reason the title of Jim's posting grabbed my attention is because of the strapline on my business cards: "e-learning: it's all about creativity" (which strangely doesn't appear on my site...). I mean two things by this:

1. The design of any form of learning experience is a creative process. My experience suggests that many in the "learning industries" haven't truly grasped this, and many are scared of it. Old learning design methodologies were driven by values that prioritised certainty and control over exploration and curiosity.
2. The experiences we design need to cultivate creativity in our learners, as the process of learning is also deeply creative, not replicative (is that a word?).

So - I completely agree with Jim that curiosity is critical - and I sense, rather unfamiliar - for organisations. Where I'd disagree is with the suggestion in the title that curiosity and creativity are disconnected.

We, as learning designers need to be endlessly curious in seeking out new ways of doing things. And this should carry through to cultivating curiosity in our learners.

But, what the hell. I think that, on the whole, truth is a good thing. In a work situation, revealing the truth about who and what you are makes it far more likely that you'll form an effective working relationship in the longer term. One of the reasons that many large organisations are so ineffective is because people leave their identities at the door on the way in. They behave in ways that don't fit, they squash their personalities. This brought to mind a slide from a brilliant presentation by Etienne Wenger I came across a few years ago. It's tough to learn effectively if you don't bring the whole of yourself into what you do.

One thing I love about digital and networked technologies is the way they show us the truth about ourselves, even if we don't want to know. A trivial example: I'm a classically trained musician with a posh degree etc. etc. My computer and iPod are crammed with music that can only be described as "high-brow". But what what does LastFM tell me I listen to all the time? Dross. Absolute rubbish. I don't want to know the truth, but that's it. And without this canny bit of technology I'd go around (accidentally?) lying to myself and others about what I listen to.

Managing the truth about what we know about each other is going to be an interesting challenge in the future for organisations. No doubt some time soon an American management guru will produce a book called something like "The Network Of Truth", or trademark a new organisational management methodology called TruthManagement (TM^TM).

Reading George Roberts' posting about blended learning it occurred to me that in corporate/organisational e-learning we seem to spend a lot of time trying to reduce the number of constraints and parameters we juggle, and increase certainty and control (of our design process, and our people...). This is what I call "engineering mentality"; the need to treat learning design as if we're building a new plumbing system or a conservatory on the back of the house.

What I liked about George Roberts' observation was that he was suggesting that we can increase the number of things we can juggle, or in this case, blend. As with a lot of academic commentary on e-learning practice, this isn't rocket science, but it's very clear and, I think, very useful.

Flicking through the really interesting and varied range of tools that we all use, I found myself assuming that not one of the people who'd contributed had learned any of these tools through formal learning, a "course" or anything similar.

Was that a good assumption? I just can't imagine any of us having the time to learn all these things step by step in a structured way; we just pick up and run with them don't we? That's what many of these tools are about: streamlining things we already do. And most - but not all - are designed to be almost instantly learnable; learnability is built in.

So what? Well, are at least some of us producing "learning materials" for use in formal learning, using tools we've all learned informally? I certainly am; which is ironic.

“What do learners need to be able to do, and in what situations do they need to do those things?”

Well, kind of. As Will says, that's a really good question to ask to shift perspective away from content, topics..."stuff". But actually, I don't think it's enough.

The question that I think really matters is more design-oriented. It's:

"What's the nature of the experience that can I create for learners that may allow them to change?" 

Of course, you can't ask my question effectively without asking Will's. But unless you ask mine, I don't think you're going to end up changing people. Will's is necessary but not sufficient.

Note that I've said "may allow them to change", not "will make them change". Something I've learned at some cost to myself is that we're in the business of providing experiences. We then have to walk away and see if they work. There's no guarantee that people will learn anything. That's because they're people, not machines (as previously believed, and as exemplified by most widely-used 20th century theories of learning).