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I've been spending (too much) time thinking about what exactly my approach to Instructional Systems Design (ISD) is. After a while, it gets a little tiresome when you end up defining up what you do in negative terms; we don't do formal learning! Man the barricades! Social Media, harumph!
One of the ideas I've been playing with is the idea of something which I couldn't give a name too. I tried Unreal Trainer and toyed with Pedagogy 2.0 (and even unPedagogy, andragogy, heutagogy, erm, unLearners - you get the picture). I eventually settled on Hypergogue. As a word, it's a little like my first bedsit - awkward and untidy but it feels like home. The basic idea is that my approach to ISD will to focus on, in order of priority:
1. Collaboration
2. Performance Support
3. Learnscape Design1
Humantics is all about, No.1 on my list, sustainable collaboration.
The basic idea. . .
. . . of the Humantics thesis is to combine 'theory from psychology with design methods [to] promote successful collaboration by designing tools to help work groups manage their weakness and build on their strengths'.
Fraser Marshall and Justin Witman suggest a helpful way to analyse collaboration paralysis might be through the anxiety caused by LADR issues which can 'stunt autonomous behaviour', a prerequisite of creativity.
Language, Authority, Direction, Role (LADR)
Healthy collaboration is playful. Issues in the following areas can cause collaboration anxiety [all the pictures get bigger if you click them]:
Language: what does it all mean? ie unnecessary jargon, poorly organised information, over-reliance on text, lack of 'actionable knowledge'
Authority: who's the best person to lead at this moment? ie reactance, dependence, uncertainty
Direction: what are we trying to achieve?
Role: what am I supposed to be doing? What am I allowed to do? When should I stop?
One method to overcome anxiety is to use design tools which, ideally, 'present the user with the ambiguity of outcome', a concept influenced by Sutton-Smith's idea that "the distinguishing feature of play is that it is an exercise in free choice."
I'm guessing a distinguishing feature of 'play' is also a lack of anxiety.
The Humantics Process
Three phases, each with their own tools and aims:
Articulation: mapping, visualisations and scenario building.
Anxiety: filtering using LADR to identify possible sources of anxiety. Then co-creating cognitive tools to fight it.
Ambition: more tools to encourage self-sufficiency in the group; Motivators (maintain purpose), Generators (promote sharing and group health), and Reflectors (assess performance).
A look at Co-Working spaces
The authors spend some time studying Indy Hall, a co-working space, to work out what makes collaboration there successful. Quotes from some of the interviews:
"You're not renting a desk, you're renting your neighbours and a community."People like social objects, such as:
"The chess board. Someone comes over to the chess board and four of us can work with a puzzle. It's a way to bond with people and make connections. It's a catalyst for creating relationships and conversations."
As well as chess boards, there's also "We Like" groups. People 'liked' coffee so they held a "Coffee-Off".
"The goal was to determine the exclusive coffee of Indy Hall, but three weeks later no winner had been decided. Why? It’s not important. Psychologically speaking, it simply served as an effective way to get people together to talk, bond and possibly collaborate. Sounds silly? One member had this to say about coffee time at Indy “Just the ideas that developed over coffee was amazing.”
"When you create management for the sake of it, there's no way you're not overmanaging. So don't. Try and find ways to help things manage themselves."Some observations from me:
I enjoyed the interviews. A lot of them reminded me of one of my favourite books, The Social Life of Information. With regard to management structures, the last quote is pretty much exactly what Systems Thinkers are saying. Or, at least, this is exactly how I'm interpreting them.
In my own experience, the people who are often the most sceptical and/or uncomfortable about games and touchy-feely facilitation tools like cards are the people with the most significant investment in the visible structures of the organisation.
Which is odd when you think about it. One of the arguments against, say, card games as a facilitation tool is that it's childish; adults don't need this kind of hand-holding from facilitators. But a card game is simply a very limited and very temporary structure. I guess nobody's saying we don't need 'structure' but rather that it's better to have structures that are rapidly assembled and then dismantled again. We're far better at assembling structures than we are at dismantling them. Compare that idea with this quote:
“At Indy Hall, unlike the corporate world, if you’re working with someone on a project and it doesn’t work out, you don’t have to work with them on the next one. In the corporate world, you’re stuck with that person and the relationship will get worse and you’ll get less productive.”As somebody once said (I can't remember where, possibly in meatspace, it may even have been me), "You can often discover all of an organisation's mistakes by reading their HR and policy manuals." We tend to idolise our mistakes.
I was also interested in Indy Hall's insistence on low tech.
. . .nor will you be given a tutorial on the sophisticated printer–because there isn’t one. The most high-tech items available are the coffee machine and the dishwasher.
The bits from Humantics I'm so going to steal
Like I say, I think the whole thing's great. LADR's a useful framwork. But this is the bit I liked most, about the way they learned to organise information during the Articulation stage:
As mentioned, upon analysis of the workshop, most intriguing to us was what we learned from the group. We leaned how to categorize the interests. Specifically, definite requirements are Essentials, those that need serious consideration are Differentiators, whereas unique interests open for discussion are Exciters.
Essentials: These are the items that most participants agree on. Because they are represented by majority decision, these items are essential to the work-task and cannot be ignored or down played. Interestingly, while these items are seen as essentials, they can be put aside to focus on the next level interests.
Differentiators: These are the interests that are common to, but not shared by everyone in the group. For example, if an issue is of interest to only 30% of the group it is not essential yet it can also not be ignored. These differentiators should be discussed and related to other interests that share a similar point of view. This can often lead them to be part of a majority interest.
Exciters: These are the individual interests developed via the D.I.Y cards. These are individual interests that are created by single group members to express personal interests not represented by the provided topics. Because of their originality, exciters can be the topics of innovative discussion. These are unique, desired and therefore open to exciting development and creative solutions.
Humantics, Visualisation and Cognitive Load
I'll finish this summary with, what was for me, the main selling point of the Humantics approach.
As you'd expect from designers, they like a bit of visualisation. And some of the partipants' comments about visualisation techniques in their pilots are persuasive.
"Visualisation would help me overcome roadblocks that verbal communication cannot."But the Humantics authors are hard-headed clear about the reasons behind their tools and approach; it reduces cognitive load.
It's useful to look at collaboration anxiety through the LADR lens but the cognitive limits to our ability to collaborate are just as important as the social limits. They quote Herbert Simon2 in the introduction:
“solving a problem simply means representing it so as to make the solution transparent.”One way to make a solution transparent is to reduce cognitive load.
“Abstraction is hiding detail. Good abstraction is hiding the right detail”2
1You can see I've nicked quite a bit from others. Not least the Internet Time Alliance. There's more here on how I'm using the word Hypergogue, if that's the kind of thing you're into. One thing I should say, Hypergogy is not supposed to replace anything. It just defines the kind of work I'm interested in. I've said it before and I shall say it again - there's still a place for training courses and the idea of the Teachable Equivalent is a useful one.
2Herbert Simon, The Sciences of the Artificial
There's a good summary here of the main ideas [PDF] which includes this quote from Mary Shaw
This piece is clear about our cognitive limits.
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