Apprehension Span

We're all aware of people's attention span. It's their 'apprehension span' that's more important.


Can ducks count?*
If ducks can't count then how do they keep track of their ducklings? Ducks know if they're a duckling short of a full flush,** but how? How can they tell when one of their offspring is out of sight?

How many strawberries can you see?
How many bananas?

It's unlikely that you had to count. Most of us can 'feel' how many strawberries and bananas there are - just like ducks can sense when one of their raft has done a runner.

What is the magical number?
So many people are familiar with George Miller's Magical Number Seven, Plus or Minus Two it's become 'common sense' (or urban legend). Most people can recall about seven chunks of information.

This is a useful rule of thumb but less useful than an understanding of subitization - the name of our ability to 'count' the strawberries and bananas without actually counting, like ducks...

Recall comes later. By Definition.
When presenting information it's wrong-headed to base your plans on what people will be able to recall. Far better for you to base your plans on what your audience will be able to grasp without having to think.

Recall is not a function of "Seven Plus or Minus Two" but of sense (in all the meanings of the word) and story, motivation and modelling. And of attention and apprehension.

Limited attention, even less understanding
We're familiar with the idea of attention span. This is why we keep our presentations (and lessons and lectures) short. And some people dutifully make sure there's no more than seven (plus or minus two) bullet points on their slides or seven (plus or minus two) ideas in their lesson plan, for example.

Underpinnng attention span, though, is apprehension span. How much can people get in one sitting? We shouldn't be measuring attention in minutes or even words. But in gettable ideas. We're sensemaking machines and we can count without thinking, just not very high.

How do you make sure your audience are subitizing your arguments and lessons and not merely counting the bullet points, especially in a world that's not Sesame Street simple?

*Sorry to break this to you but dogs don't smile either.

**Collective nouns for ducks: flush, brace, flock, paddling, team and raft.

Sesame Street Simple

Keeping things simple is not about dumbing down.
Bob Sutton writes:

...if a message is too complicated understand, it is also means that the implications for action are impossible to understand as well.

He's writing about the way executives in large organisations communicate:

...although executives who talk about many ideas and complex ideas will be viewed as smarter -- wiser and more effective executives pick just a few simple messages and repeat them over and over again until people throughout the organization internalise them and use them to guide action.

We pay teachers to dumb things down...
It's not only in large organisations where this is true.

• We pay experts to pay attention and to brainstorm; they're connoisseurs of the complex.
• We pay teachers to synthesise and summarise.
• You can fulfil the role of both 'expert' and 'teacher'. But not at the same time.

Anybody who's ever taught knows the feeling(and the point of this blog is that everybody is a teacher, no exceptions). You feel you're not doing the subject justice.

Here's a brief guide for how to act when you feel this way. Should you take learners on a tour of the twists and turns or, as AG Lafley, CEO at Procter & Gamble says, keep it Sesame Street Simple?

Instructions: Use the flowchart to work out how to present your message and where you're going to add value. [Click it to make it larger]

The most important point here is not that you can't help learners appreciate and understand the complexities. But you can't do it while standing at the front of a class or a lecture hall. Or while chairing a meeting or 'supervising' an employee.

More on what I mean by experiential in future posts. But, in the meantime, I'd appreciate all your thoughts. What do you think 'experiential' means? Experiential Schmechschmeriential? Or experiential = explorential?

Up the Injunction (Part II)

 Or, Idea-Killing Zombies in the Training Room. People resist new ideas because, well, because. Marketing has a lot to teach us in this area.


When you're working with organisations, the kind of injunctions (see earlier post), idee fixe or plain-old negativity you have to deal with tends to be rooted in resistance to change.

Everybody resists change, it's a part of who we are and what we do. Except for those who don't resist change because of who they are and what they do. The point here is that your attitude toward change is unlikely to entirely conscious.

Some people seek change. Some don't. There's no good or bad here. (Incidentally, it's worth noting many of us wouldn't have jobs if this weren't the case.)

Here's an idea for dealing with injunctions from Idea Sandbox, a company that helps you think-up great ideas:

The fact that Idea Sandbox are a involved in marketing is interesting because there's a lot they have to teach people involved in learning. Here's a very interesting discussion on learning from marketing (and games) over at Cammy Bean's blog, particularly on the idea of creating a Learning Campaign:

We don’t typically create the new tools in eLearning – that innovation is happening in other places – e.g., marketing.

Marketers are REALLY good at understanding who their target audience is.

 I'm going to look at learning and marketing over the next month or so with posts on the Crossing the Chasm, Walt Disney and the Invisible, Permission vs Interruption and Branding. I'm also going to take one more look at injunctions in Zombie Trainers on PowerPoint.

Teachable Moments

Learning is all about exploiting the Teachable Moment

10000 hours = three years in America. Longer in Europe...
This blog's about becoming expert in helping people learn.* Which, apparently, will take you a little bit longer than three years (if you work ruddy hard).

Becoming an Attention Ninja
What should you spend those three years doing? Keen observation, accurate feedback and perpetual iteration are one framework for developing expert intuition. As well as geeking out, unTrainers need to work on their noticing skills. We need to pay attention.

Structured Reflection
It's all well and good asking somebody to 'reflect'. But the road to Reflective Practitioner-ville is paved with good intentions and interesting diversions. Reflection, like learning, works best if there's a structure. If you can create your own little breadcrumb trail, your own structure, so much the better. Use your own wayfinding techniques.


Things I learned from a dead fish
Teachable Moments form the structure of my mental model for learning. Here's a moment from this morning. A story about dead fish in fMRI scanners reminded me of Anscombe's Quartet. I work with organisations on targets and performance management and these stories highlight the danger of relying too much on quantitative statistics. Hey presto! A teachable moment. (Note: I'm not saying I will use these specific examples with learners. They're the kind of thing I like but others won't, necessarily. But they have created an image in my mind of how I will structure future learning projects and conversations. Perhaps, teachable momentum might be a better phrase.)

Reading the phrase 'teachable moment' was itself a Teachable Moment.

Taxonomy of Teachable Moments
Moments might come from the news, the interwebs, history, fairy tales or even, though I doubt it, textbooks. Even better, they might come from real life. Amazing, I know. Mine are triggered by discovery, whimsy, problem-solving, satisfaction, delight - and pain.

Getting better at helping people learn is about noticing Teachable Moments. (And creating them. That's another post but I guess there's a clue above).

[Rootstalk and rhizomes: I came across the idea of the Teachable Moment reading Tom Atlee's Posterous. The link to Why We Learn More from Success came from Brain Friendly Trainer. The Teachable Moment this morning came from Twitter, which is a veritable gold mine of them. Follow me on Twitter, say "Hi" and share yours. More on Teachable Moments.]

*I believe that, inceasingly, professional trainers will manage Learning and Development as opposed to delivering it. The same thing will happen to workplace learning as happened to Corporate Presentations and the Training Department will be absorbed by the Knowledge Management department. This all seems more polemic than practical, though. So I don't talk about it here. If you're interested, let me know on Twitter or in the comments. I enjoy conversation.

[Images from Gravestone via Flickr Creative Commons]

Future of School: Guitar Hero

For those interested in learning, the Guitar Hero debate ranges from facile to fascinating. And, just in case it's not obvious, I'm (mostly) not really talking about Guitar Hero here.

Like newspapers and bloggers...
Jimmy Page and Jack White say it's depressing. Bill Wyman says it discourage kids from learning. Prince says it's not as rewarding as the joy of creating something from nothing. Pink Floyd drummer, Nick Mason says:

"It irritates me having watched my kids do it - if they spent as much time practicing the guitar as learning how to press the buttons they'd be damn good by now."

So, three arguments against Guitar Hero*

1. Bill Wyman = disappointed that the kids won't play
There's no doubting that Guitar Hero is popular, but does it really encourage kids not to learn? Wikipedia says it's sold 25 million units worldwide, so that's a lot of kids discouraged, right? Perhaps. In 2003 (the latest survey I could find) there were 84 million people claiming they could play a musical instrument in the United States. And they had bemani games then too. Guitar Hero probably won't make that much of a difference.

2. Prince = funky
Prince clearly hasn't seen the YouTube videos, the forums or, indeed, watched any kids playing Guitar Hero. It's not art, maybe. But I do see signs of fun, if not full-on joy. (Particularly, not in this video of a boy playing the game on hard while solving a Rubik's Cube.)

3. Set the controls for the heart of the fun
Nick Mason's point is much more interesting. My nephew recently announced that he'd like to learn the guitar. So I cut a deal with him - he practices four times a week for six months and I'll buy him the electric guitar he wants. But for now he puts up with the 'classical' guitar the school rents him. He's happy with that. And so am I because I know something he doesn't.

He wants to play the guitar, sure. But I'm not at all sure he wants to learn it. In Guitar Hero, these two things are one and the same.

Nick Mason is right; Guitar Hero, played well, is ruddy hard. Kids are paying £40 to learn something that's pretty hard. They want to play the guitar. They want to learn Guitar Hero.

Clearly, there's something going on here.

Clearly, there's something going on here
What is going on here? eLearning experts Cracked Rabbit Gaming give their version:

1. Guitar Hero is tons of fun, right away.
2. There isn't a huge learning curve, you can jump right in and "feel" like you're playing guitar, even on Easy!
3. You get to play real songs, with a full (virtual) band, and not start out with "Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star," or other boring songs.
4. Some people just really like video games.
5. It's cheaper than a real guitar.
6. You don't have to tune it.
7. You don't have to buy new strings.
8. You don't have to learn to read music (you have to learn to read scrolling notes, sure, but come on, green = green, that's not hard!).**
9. Guitar Hero is tons of fun, even after you've beaten every song.***
10. You can play with a group of friends, even if they've never played before.
11. It has a scoring system, which means you can compete against friends, and people all over the world by comparing scores online.
12. Guitar Hero is tons of fun, period.

If you can find a better manifesto for your Learning and Development consultancy, a better piece of marketing copy for your eLearning package or a better lesson plan then I'd like to see it. If you're hiring in some trainers, ask them if they can match this offer.

*I didn't include Jimmy Page's argument because it sounds like something from Spinal Tap. And Jack White is actually in Guitar Hero, twice, so his point lacks congruence.]

**This is probably the best description of Cognitive Load I've seen.

***Point 9 kind of goes against the main thrust of my argument. Feel free to home in on this.

[Just in case you're wondering, this is something that we're deadly serious about here. We're not saying that all of our stuff is like this - we wish - but it should aspire to be.]

[Image by particlem]

Up the Injunction (Part I)

Injunctions are beliefs that we accept uncritically. They're planted in our subconscious by things like parents and experiences. They can be difficult to shake. And can be harmful. Or inconvenient, if you're trying to teach people something.

You should have this as a tattoo
My first boss said something I've adopted as a motto. We were talking about students who 'don't want to learn' - "Why do they bother showing up?" I said.
Pointing out the window, he said:

"Always remember you're competing for attention with that."

Injunctions=brainwashing
It's not just 'that' we're competing with. There's other teachers for a start.
Transactional Analysis, a psychotherapy schism, has a term which wraps this idea up neatly. We all have:

'...messages from our parents that we have been programmed to accept and that we unknowingly incorporate into our lives...'

It's you against the world, kid
What this means for teachers is that every time you tell somebody something, you're competing with their parents. And every other major influence on their life. With children, this might not be so bad as you may well be the most influential person. However, if you're teaching adults and this is true, you are probably a cult leader.

If only we could blame the parents...
In my early twenties I had the 'sticky legs' recurring dream. In it, every time I tried to run it felt like my legs were in treacle. (You don't have to be a psychologist to interpret that dream...) Walking down the road to a tram stop, my friend, seeing an approaching tram, said, "Shall we run?" I started to say, "I can't, my legs get stuck like they're in mud." My friend was Czech and used to me getting things hopelessly wrong. She just repeated the question. We ran and caught the tram. (Incidentally, I never had the dream again. This injunction didn't stand up to daylight scrutiny.) This is an injunction borne of a recurring dream.

You might be competing with dreams.

Competing with ghosts
I'm a parent with young children. I find myself giving my children insane advice. And snap at them for absurd infractions probably inherited from grandparents and great-grandparents and other people I've never met who lived through the war, senility and alcoholism. And all in a pre-Ben Goldacre world.

You are competing with dead people.

They just won't die!
Although I scoff at people who insist on wearing scarves to ward off colds, I caught myself saying the other day, "Don't put that coin in your mouth, it's been in a bus driver's pocket." No, I don't know what that means either.

You are competing.

[Brief, possibly unnecessary, disclaimer: I have little patience with psychotherapy. Which is possibly a failing on my part. And I've noticed that conversations between adults that end up 'blaming mother' rarely go well. But I haven't been able to find this concept expressed better elsewhere - if you have, please leave links in the comments. Part of being good at helping people learn is stealing from wherever you can. The mind's a Kluge and lessons should be too.]

The description of an injunction comes from Zeus and Skiffington's The Coaching at Work Toolkit

Next time: Idea-Killing Zombies in the Training Room!

My worst day at work, ever

Textbooks, rules and curricula - who are they really for?

Learning a language is easy. You just have to remember it's hard, see?
I speak Czech. Or rather, I used to. You know the phrase, "Use it or lose it"? Trust me on this one, you lose it.

I lived in Czechoslovakia back when it was Czechoslovakia. Few people spoke English and I learned quickly. To this day, people who know me say that I'm 'good at learning languages' - I'm not, not really. I just worked very hard and studied for 10 or so hours a day.

Things I could do in Czech which made me feel like I spoke it:

• Have blazing rows with girlfriends and waiters
• Work as an interpreter at a fruit importers
• See Waiting for Godot (I hate it bilingually)
• Explain ice hockey's icing rule
• Teach other people Czech

I even taught native speakers a thing or two about Czech grammar. I probably still could. (Sadly, grammar is the last thing to go.)

The Worst Day of my Working Life
Back in England, a hapless tour company asked me to put my skills to use and lead a coachload of Czech tourists on an six-hour stopover around London. They gave me a coach, a chatty driver and a microphone. Then packed me off to Heathrow to meet the group.

I realised I was in trouble as we approached the Victoria Embankment. The helpful driver, nervous at my nervousness, suggested I tell them all about the Thames, "Tell them about the tidal flow - it's seven metres!" he suggested. He was very excited about the tidal flow.

Czechoslovakia is a landlocked country. The only reason I even knew the word 'tide' was because of a Barbara Streisand film (I remember asking somebody what the title of the film meant and they gave a tortuously 'expert' answer...). Wowing them with facts and figures about 'the longest river in the British Isles that only flows within the borders of England' was simply beyond me.

Other moments of extreme discomfort:

• Driver: Tell them that they clip the raven's wings to prevent the legend coming true!
• Tourist: (rough translation) I know you can't 'commentate', but why not try just 'chatting'?
• Driver: When the flag's at half-mast, it means somebody's died!
• Tourist: We only have six hours in London. Six hours! It's my summer holiday!

There are (at least) three lessons here:

1. Proficiency depends upon context.
You can't just be an 'expert'. You can only be an expert in something specific. At a specific time. In a specific place. Expertise fades and is often non-transferable.

2. Stored knowledge is unvaluable. Knowledge flow is invaluable
It's only when you apply knowledge to different situations, different groups of people and different domains that it becomes usable. Knowledge is currency, useless unless you can spend it.

3. Grammar is the last thing to go
We teach people rules, which we hope they'll apply. The rules are neatly organised and stacked into logical formats. We design learning aids and mnemonics. But you have to ask yourself this question:

Who is grammar really for? Teachers or learners?

[Image: Magical Mystery Tour/Wikimedia Commons]

Unreal Trainers

Richard Goutal tells us that a real trainer is somebody defined as:

someone who uses sound theory to determine the best path to human performance improvement.

In the Who's Us? section, we talk about who we are. But not who you are - the people we're writing for.

We're writing for unreal trainers.

unReal Trainers


An unReal Trainer is basically anybody who is helping other people to learn and develop. Some examples:

• Unreal trainers are in-house staff and managers who do most of the learning support in any business
• Unreal trainers are the people who are so good at their job - the expert practitioners - they've been asked to help others get better too.
• Unreal trainers are line managers who have neither the time nor the money to spend on formal training so have to do it themselves at team meetings and away days.
• Unreal trainers are the managers who do have the time and money to spend on learning and development but aren't sure how to spend their money wisely.

That's you.

The only qualification you need to be an unreal trainer is a passion for helping people to grow and a willingness to geek out on learning. If you care enough to try and get better, then that should be good enough. It may have to be good enough.

Everybody who works is an unReal Trainer. It's a craft and it's something everybody needs to get better at - no exceptions.

[Image: From FiniteAttentionSpan]

What made YOU the expert?

Five components of expertise.

Begin with the end in mind
There is only one end that a good teacher should have in mind. Make yourself obsolete. Learners should make the leap from novice to expert and overtake you.
Expert but not in being an expert
Many experts lack a true awareness of what it is that makes them an 'expert'. Ask them 'how they know what they know' and you'll get a range of responses ranging from the puzzled "I just know" to long, articulate and persuasive, but ultimately fictional, rationalisations. To test this, simply ask a native speaker of English what the difference between 'may' and 'might' is. Or 'will' and 'shall'. Or virtually any question on 'grammar'. (Even better just watch these Most Ridiculous Instruction videos for proof.)

(Of course, there are some experts who know why they know. Teachers, Knowledge Management people, psychologists, philosophers, for example. Whether they agree why they know what they know is another matter...)

What's a novice?
One way to unpick the mysteries of expertise is to look at what makes somebody not-an-expert. eLearning Coach has a useful description of novices:

"Compared to an expert, a novice will have a limited network of mental structures or schemas related to the subject, a reduced ability to make relevant perceptual discriminations, fewer paths for recalling information and inaccurate or fuzzy mental models resulting in less competent problem solving."

• Schema
• Discrimination
• Recalling information
• Mental models
• Problem-solving

We touched on mental models in a previous post (but Usable Learning's Why your Brain is a Closet does this far better than us). We'll have a more detailed look at the above in future posts.

Final note on experts
Experts are often called Subject Matter Experts, particularly in training departments. This helps to separate them from 'experts in training'. Dave Ferguson's post SME? Not for me makes a persuasive case for the term 'Expert Practitioner'. And, as with all the posts at Dave's Whiteboard, is well worth a read.

What do you think is missing from this description of expertise?

Usable Learning

Usable Learning is the name of a blog. Unlike Bunchberry & Fern, it's a good description of what it's about. Even better, it describes what the blog does.

People who know a lot about a specific topic or area are sometimes called SMEs - Subject Matter Experts. And there's a great cartoon which explains that people who know a lot about something don't necessarily make the best teachers.

You could go look at the cartoon. Or you could start reading about something like Cognitive Load Theory.

Why is it that cartoons can be so effective at helping people to understand and learn things?

Usable Learning has the answer to this too in an even more wonderful post - Why your brain is like a closet.

Which sure beats boning up on Instructional Scaffolding.

Teachers, Celebrities and Party Animals

The Organisation Chart is going to die. Corporate Communications are already dead. How will this affect learning professionals?

The Organisation Chart changed the world when it was introduced. But they're getting to be like business cards. You might keep one around for the odd traditionalist or a visiting Japanese trade delegation, but your children probably never will. It's polite to have an organogram.

The problem with organograms
But Org Charts are hierarchical. There will always be a 'hierarchy'. But this is much more likely to be a description of payscales than of how actual real work is done.

Real work is being done by networks. Networks - by definition - don't have a hierarchy. There isn't a commander and networks control themselves. (This is not to say certain members of a network don't have more influence. Or that networks don't have regulatory mechanisms. Just that there's no command and control.)

No hierarchy. No use for Org Charts.

The problem (for corporations) of Corporate Communications
Corporate communcations, in their traditional form, haven't so much died but become irrelevant. Messages are drowned out by the chatter (or the Twitter) of networks.

Networked people expect to be able to speak to each other. Howard Rheingold's noticed it in classrooms. You've noticed it too.

But what's wrong with teaching?
There's a good reason that we've always had teachers who chalked and talked. And trainers who are the sage on the stage. We know it works.

Stick an expert in front of a group of non-experts and knowledge will be transferred. Add to this the fact that there are some wonderfully dedicated teachers out there and you can see why so many learning professionals see talk of a revolution as over the top.

Not waving but icky
But, in a world where organisations have to engage and participate in networks to communicate with their customers and Organization Charts are history, a learning environment with a teacher who stands at the front of a room of people who are expected to sit back, pay attention and learn will just be plain weird.

Lectures will be icky.

PS
This is not a prediction. This is the future that's already here. There will always be people who are called teachers and trainers and lecturers. My guess is that they'll become more like entertainers and that learning environments will become more like nightclubs. And that there'll be games.

Seth has made some suggestions.

But, whatever happens, learning will lose its industrialised feel and teachers will have to relearn their craft.

Trust vs Respect

You often hear teachers and trainers talking of 'trust'. My learners trust me, they say. I'm working on building their trust. It's important that you feel you can trust me...

Well, maybe.

When learning professionals start to bandy the T-word, alarm bells should start ringing. Because it's almost certainly too much to ask. And it's probably not what you're being paid for.

Respect comes from knowing your onions. And wearing a watch.
Respect is fine. You should be able to gain respect pretty rapidly. Wear the right clothes. Show up on time. Avoid inappropriate jokes. Know your onions.

Trust means you have to take risks
But trust can only come from shared risk. Teachers have sanctions, and use them. They pass and they fail, they exclude, they decide who talks and when.

Trainers do too - just perhaps not as formal.

Who are you trying to kid?
The next time you find yourself talking about the learners who trust you, stop and think. What is it - exactly - that you are risking?

The World's Worst Questions

Brain Friendly Trainer has a great post on asking better questions (Hash teabags, teenagers and great questions) and compares some of the questions that teachers and trainers ask to the Undisputed World Champion Worst Question, "Can I help you?"

The post is on the weakness of asking a group, "Does anybody have any questions?" This reminded me of something we do in our Training the Trainer courses on Concept Checking Questions.

Do You Understand?
Look at the picture above. If I asked you, "Can you see what the picture is?" what would I have learned? Nothing much. You might me seeing the duck or you might be seeing the philosophical rabbit.

This is why asking somebody 'if they understand' is such a 'low-value' question. All too often, the answer is, "Yes." - with an unspoken addition, " but in my own special way..."

Stealing from English teachers
Why is the question so popular if it's so useless? Mostly for the same reason that we ask people if they have any questions or we use Creeping Death as our method of getting everybody to know each other.

It's easy. We're used to it. It's a habit.

ESOL (English for Speakers of Other Languages) teachers don't have this luxury. For them, the question, "Do you understand?" isn't just a piece of social grooming. It has real meaning - and it doesn't work.

Concept Checking Questions
Concept Questions are usually a series of simple, relatively closed questions that ask somebody to demonstrate that they have understood.

Have a look on the web and see if you think Concept Questions would be appropriate for your group work and meetings. Before you decide against it (and many people who read about them worry they will sound 'patronising' - they won't, trust us) ask yourself this question:

Could it possibly be any worse than asking somebody, "Do you understand?"

[Image from a post on Gestalt Shift]

Who's Us?

Bunchberry & Fern = Learning and Development in organisations.



Our guiding principle is:
Classroom training is fine. But only if you have exhausted all the other options.

Bunchberries are the planet's fastest plant.
Ferns are among the planet's oldest. And toughest.

Both plants are rhizomatous.

Rhizomes are rootstalks that grow horizontally underground. In the 1970's, some philosophers described traditional learning as arborescent (like a tree). They also said:

Knowledge should be negotiated and learning is social - a personal knowledge creation process with mutable goals and constantly negotiated premises.

The above is from Wikipedia. To be honest, they had us at rootstalk.

Learning like a rhizome means:

Project Learning
Or having a go and then working out what went wrong, what went right and what to do next. We steal bits from things like Agile, Appreciative Enquiry and formal Project Management.

Knowledge Management
Open Space Technology, Knowledge/World Cafes, Appreciative Enquiry, shiny technology

Sensemaking, Storytelling, Peer Coaching and 'Tools'
Working in teams to come to a shared understanding of ideas and experiences. Learning how to learn - making things explicit and accessible.

Classroom training
We're not fanatics. Sometimes it's just easier to get a trainer in to facilitate or go through things - hopefully, a good one who uses games and engaging activities. We also do things like Training the Trainer and help organisations to set up their own internal training programmes.

We don't do eLearning. It's not that we don't like it. We work with people who do it. It's just not what we do. We do do Learning Design.

Random fact: We'll pick a fight with anyone who ever says, "Let's not reinvent the wheel."

[Update: Who's you?]