On a long-ago training assignment, I was told that Amtrak (my employer at the time) was moving to SNA/SDLC architecture. We never covered that in English Literature before 1500, so I asked one I.T. guy what that meant. "Systems network architecture, synchronized data link control." So I asked another guy.  "That means you can get to any of our mainframe computers from any of our terminals." So, learning at work isn’t always straightforward.  Both answers have been useful to me: the second as a clear explanation, the first as a metaphor for unhelpful precision.  Granted, nearly 30 years later, I can still recite the tech definition.  But I’d argue this mainly demonstrates the relatively low value of definition as opposed to application.  Most of the time, on the job, it’s not what you call things, it’s what they do. Both explanations were brief, like a tweet on Twitter.  Tweets are like darts: they move quickly, and what’s important is the destination.  That’s either destination in the sense that you’re nudging another person or a select group in "public," or destination in the sense that what counts isn’t the tweet but what it points to. A couple of months back, Marcia Connor, Clark Quinn, and a few other people started #lrnchat.  This is a schedule but informal Twitter-based conversation around learning.  (Thursday evenings, 8:30p - 10p Eastern time; "about" stuff here.) When Marcia and I talked about this (on Twitter), I was skeptical, but decided to participate in a couple of the chats. Very dart-like, but in a good way.  There’s often a proposed theme to the conversation, but no topic police.  To me, the conversation is like the end-of-day chatter of people at a conference: energetic, more concurrent than liner, and without ribbons for board members, speakers, or eminent gurus. (Here’s the transcript for the #lrnchat of 5-28, to give you an idea.) I find Twitter helpful, not essential.  My phone isn’t all that smart, and I don’t spend weekends in from of my computer, so especially on weekends, I’m not on Twitter, and I don’t spend much effort catching up.  That’s kind of like trying to catch up on the tides that happened the week before you got to the beach. "Essential" isn’t the real issue, though.  For me, one question is: how can I connect with other people, especially if their work relates in some way to mine?  I’ve done that face-to-face, of course.  I’ve done it through professional organizations.  I’ve done it through email.  And, more recently, I’ve done it through my blog, through Facebook, and through Twitter. Eventually the connection transcends the medium: you start thinking about what you discussed with Cammy or with Harold, not about where.  I will concede, however, that today is different.  Some people I’ve only connected with online are in DC for a conference today, and we’ll be meeting tonight at the east coast’s largest purveyor of Guinness.  Twitter’s great, but I plan to do more than link to a pint. Custom (Dodge) Dart detail by o2b.

Series: Ten Steps to Complex Learning « Previous post in this series • Next post in this series » Ten Steps to Complex Learning says that complex skills have aspects that you apply differently for each task (the non-recurrent skills) and aspects that you apply in the same way each time you use them (recurrent skills). Heck, even I’ve said that a time or two in this series.  I bring it up again because Step 7, design procedural information, marks the move into the third of the four components in van Merriënboer and Kirschner’s model: the procedural information component into which those recurrent skills fit. (You can click the image to see the complete chart with all four components and all ten steps.) vM&K see three types of procedural information: Just-in-time (JIT) display of information (prerequisites, rules, procedures) Demonstrations of applying the information Corrective feedback about errors The heart of this chapter is that when you’re dealing with recurrent skills like formatting a document or processing a mortgage or digitizing video, you want to help the learner acquire these skills-compile the knowledge, in the book’s terminology.  As he does so, he creates his own specific cognitive rules, and then can perform without the need for a cognitive schema (which would be needed for a non-recurrent skill). Take reading: English has a complex grammar and vocabulary, so learning to read it is a complex skill.  That skill includes many recurrent aspects.  As you read this paragraph, you’re not sounding out the individual syllables; you’re scarcely aware of individual letters unless your attention is drawn to them.  That’s because you’ve automated rules for recognizing a word and relating it to those around it. Sections in this chapter of the Ten Steps: Providing JIT displays Giving examples of JIT information (okay, so the book says "exemplifying") Presentation strategies Corrective feedback Procedural information in the training blueprint Just the steps, just in time One definition of a job aid is something that tells you what to do and when to do it, in order to reduce the need to memorize.  JIT display of information is like that. For a given set of tasks (meaning, ones with similar difficulty), the procedural information is likely the same, and so you’d provide that information for the first task.  You might gradual reduce or fade the amount of procedural information as the learner continued with additional tasks. The two forms of JIT information correspond to the next two steps in the book: the cognitive rules that you follow (Step 8), and the prerequisite information necessary to apply those rules (Step 9). As I read this chapter, it occurred to me that a lot of organizational training often tries to treat non-recurrent tasks as recurrent, and vice-versa. Take the supposed soft skill of interviewing a job candidate.  Some aspects of that skill are recurrent: reviewing the requirements for the job, reading the candidate’s resume, arranging a time and place for the interview, making a checklist of items to verify, using both open and closed questions. So in "how to interview" training, you could provide a checklist to help prepare and conduct an interview. The actual conversation, though, is always going to be non-recurrent: you’re not interviewing the same person over and over.  Generic training on "interview skills" can’t just give you a checklist of ten questions and five phases.  As noted earlier, for non-recurrent skills, there’s no single right answer. What makes for successful just-in-time display of procedural information? First, a modular structure with small steps.  You want the information to have a clear goal that the performer can easily accomplish: "How to change page orientation" is vM&K’s example.  The small size and straightforward goal minimize cognitive load.  Prerequisite knowledge (e.g., definitions of landscape and portrait) can appear as callouts or hyperlinks. And when it comes to procedural information, nice-to-know isn’t. Next, a focus on entry-level users.  A key difference between a procedure and a systematic approach to problem-solving is that procedures are virtually mechanical (vM&K say "algorithmic"): if you follow these steps, you get this result. Third, you want to avoid splitting the learner’s attention.  That means minimizing any requirement for the learner to shift back and forth between the actual task and the supporting information. Here’s an example of those two items being closely joined (in this case, how to test the resistance of conductors in wiring):  (This diagram and some other examples of the split attention effect appear in section 5.8 of  this article by Dr. Graham Cooper of Australia, "Research into Cognitive Load Theory and Instructional Design at UNSW.") Sometimes you can’t help splitting attention-a person might need to consult a procedure separately from the immediate task.  You can’t easily assemble machinery while holding the manual, and you can’t always label the parts with the steps. One approach is to put parts of the task into the reference (through diagrams and illustrations); another one, just on the horizon, is to adapt the environment-e.g., a heads-up display that makes the steps visible through a special pair of glasses. JIT: know it when you see it One way to present just-in-time information is through demonstrations, like the "show me" options in help systems that demonstrate how to, say, create a chart in Excel. vM&K strongly urge using relevant, whole tasks for such examples.  Let’s say the specific procedure is getting a set of PowerPoint slides to start with a specifed number.  One demonstration could have a person who’s created two files and wants to start numbering one set whether the other left off.  The larger context is someone who wants two files (Part 1 and Part 2), and the specific example is getting Part 2 to start numbering at, say, 45. That places the renumbering skill in a concrete setting.  A later example could have someone wanting to start numbering after the title slide (so the title doesn’t have number, and so the second slide is numbered 1).  The same procedure as the other example, but a different demonstration with a different real-life context. A second way to deliver JIT information is through what the Ten Steps call instances, meaning examples.  Here you might provide the learner with an example (an instance) of concepts or principles of the skills being learned.  For a researcher, you might provide descriptions of different types of databases.  Again, you’d want to do so in a context that relates to the task being learned-databases relevant to science if the research is in a scientific setting. Finally, you may need to provide a range of demonstrations or instances.  In vM&K’s example of changing page orientation, you might change from portrait to landscape, and vice-versa.  You might change the layout of a multi-page document.  And you might change the layout of one section in a multipage document, and then change back afterward. That’s enough for one post.  Next time: presentation strategies for procedural information (some of which surprised me), corrective feedback, and probably a few remarks about knowledge compilation. The posts in this series: Complex learning, step by stepComplex learning (coffee on the side)Ten little steps, and how One grewProblem solving, scaffolding, and varied practiceStep 2: sequencing tasks, or, what next?Clusters, chains, and part-task sequencingStep 3: performance objectives (the how of the what)Criteria for objectives-also, values and attitudesStep 4: supportive info (by design)Learning to learn (an elaboration)Step 5: cognitive strategies (when you don’t know what to do)Step 6: (thinking about) mental modelsStep 7: procedural info, or, how to handle routine (that's this post) Procedural in practice

My dad left a small Canadian town for Detroit in 1951; my mother, my brothers, and I joined him a year later. With Chrysler so much in the news (he spent 24 years at the Warren Stamping Plant), I’ve musing about how he managed to build a vibrant life in a new country starting at age 38.  Call it "Networking with Hughie."  These come to me as echos of how he talks. "What’s new, strange, or startling?" That’s what Dad says to someone he hasn’t seen for a while.  You can read it just as "what’s new," but I also see it as an invitation to open an experiential door or two: What’s going on in your world that you haven’t figured out yet?  (As Asimov said, the key phrase in science isn’t "Eureka!" but "That’s funny…") What’s surprised you lately?  (Surprise to me is a sign that your expectations weren’t quite up to reality.  Could be good, could be bad, but certainly not predictable.) "Ciamar a tha thu?" When someone answers Dad’s phone call, he’ll reply this way-if they’re in his vast circle of friends and family from Cape Breton Island.  The phrase is Scottish Gaelic (kimmer a hah oo, "How are you?") . When he was growing up, Gaelic was common; his father and his father’s best friend preferred it to English. On one level, he’s just saying hi.  At the same time, he’s being playful (which is a pretty good networking technique).  Dad can’t hold a conversation in Gaelic, and with one or two exceptions, neither can anyone else he knows. He’s also re-activating the connection.  Not heavily, not tediously; he’s not mourning the loss of Cànan Nan Gàidheal. What he’s doing, I think, is lightly making explicit one link he has with the other person. "Going back to God’s country" Hemingway said that Paris is a movable feast; for Dad, the feast has always been Cape Breton.  But he’s an immigrant, someone who moves to stay, and not a sojourner, who longs to move back. That’s true even though he’s probably made more than a hundred trips back home. Planning the trip, he’d tell friends and coworkers about getting ready to go to God’s country.  And once back, he’d cheerfully tease those who’d never been (on what their lives were lacking). None of this was in a whiny, it’s-so-much-better-back-there way. To me, that’s like "be here now." Cape Breton is a grounding for him, but it isn’t the entire world.  It’s part of what makes him authentic, part of what he brought to his circle of friends. And what a circle.  Dad was an auto worker, a UAW member-but his closest friends included an attorney, a CPA, the owner of a tool and die business, the manager of a jewelry store, and a top administrator in the Detroit school system. He’s always been at ease with who he was, and curious about things in worlds outside his own.  How else are you going to find the new, the strange, or the startling? CC-licensed images: Startling Stories cover by Tohoscope; photo of the Margaree River by luvmycrows.

Series: Ten Steps to Complex Learning « Previous post in this series • The posts in this series: Complex learning, step by stepComplex learning (coffee on the side)Ten little steps, and how One grewProblem solving, scaffolding, and varied practiceStep 2: sequencing tasks, or, what next?Clusters, chains, and part-task sequencingStep 3: performance objectives (the how of the what)Criteria for objectives-also, values and attitudesStep 4: supportive info (by design)Learning to learn (an elaboration)Step 5: cognitive strategies (when you don’t know what to do)Step 6: (thinking about) mental modelsStep 7: procedural info, or, how to handle routineProcedural in practice (that's this post)

Series: Ten Steps to Complex Learning « Previous post in this series • Next post in this series » The posts in this series: Complex learning, step by stepComplex learning (coffee on the side)Ten little steps, and how One grewProblem solving, scaffolding, and varied practiceStep 2: sequencing tasks, or, what next?Clusters, chains, and part-task sequencingStep 3: performance objectives (the how of the what)Criteria for objectives-also, values and attitudesStep 4: supportive info (by design)Learning to learn (an elaboration)Step 5: cognitive strategies (when you don’t know what to do)Step 6: (thinking about) mental modelsStep 7: procedural info, or, how to handle routineProcedural in practiceStep 8: cognitive rules, or, when there IS a right way (that's this post) Step 9: prequisites, or, ya gotta start somewhereStep 10: part-task practice (getting better at getting faster)