enteRETAINment

SpeedReaching People

I recently had the opportunity to sit in on a fantastic one day instructor led workshop by a company called SpeedReadingPeople. The workshop teaches a two part process; SpeedREAD & SpeedREACH. 

• SpeedREAD helps you to quickly identify key personality type characteristics of others based on easily observable clues such as demeanor, body language, appearance, energy level, vocabulary, and speech patterns. It is based on the Myers-Briggs personality typing and breaks out into 4 type preferences . . .  Extroversion/Introversion, Sensing/Intuition, Thinking/Feeling, Judging/Perceiving.
• SpeedREACH teaches the techniques to adjust your communication style so you can present information in a manner that is more comfortable for the person you are engaging with.

An interesting observation from the workshop was how engaged the attendees were for the entire all-day session. They all seemed excited about the content and how the training might help them better communicate with managers, peers and direct reports. During workshop down time, the attendees seemed to enjoyed trying to guess each other's personality types.

Another interesting  take away from the session was the section on presenting to groups. The strategy takes into consideration the various personality types of the audience and the suggested style/order of reaching the audience is Intuitives - Sensors- Thinkers - Feelers. This fits nicely with the concept of enteRETAINment and specifically storytelling. Drawing all personality types into a story early by presenting the content in an order and style that appeals to each can pump up the engagement level significantly.

With so many companies having both internal and external communications as an top challenge the SpeedREAD/ SpeedREACH concept seems like a great tool for all,especially executives, managers and sales folks. The CEO of the company. Paul Tieger, has written several books one of which is The Art of Speed Reading People which I just finished reading and recommend .

Sir Ken Robinson: Do schools kill creativity?

In the 20 minute presentation below from the TED 2006 conference, Sir Ken Robinson discusses the importance of creativity in learning and the need for our society to create an education system that nurtures creativity, as opposed to the current system that often fails to recognize creativity and in many ways undermines it.

"We are educating people out of their creativity."  -- Sir Ken Robinson

Meaning of Life

From the Digital Storytelling Cookbook and Traveling Companion by Joe Lambert . . .

"The other day I asked my 7-year-old daughter about the meaning of life. 'Well,' she answered without hesitation, 'there’s having fun, having love in your family, and learning things, you know, knowledge.' I spent 49 years searching for the meaning of life. I guess I should have had the good sense to ask a kid in the first place."

Roger Schank webinar - The Power and Effectiveness of Storytelling in Training

On July 19th from 12-1PM CDT, Roger Schank, author and CEO/Founder of SocraticARTS will host an hour long webinar, The Power and Effectiveness of Storytelling in Training. He'll discuss the importance of stories in training/learning. Roger is the author of a great book titled Lessons in Learning, e-learning and Training.

Multiplayer MBA?

A new report released last week details how massively multiplayer online role-playing games are shaping the next generation of corporate leaders. The study looks at how players are learning to organize, collaborate, take risks as well as how online environments can facilitate the development of leadership qualities. There are some good takeaways from the report but keep in mind that the report was released by a software company whose software is inspired from multiplayer games.

Takeaways:

• players use of sophisticated communications channels
• delegation of leadership responsibilities
• formulating strategies quickly, with imperfect data, and putting strategy into motion without fear of consequences
• a basic lesson learned according to the report involves breaking major operations into smaller projects and assigning leadership for those projects based on expertise.
  • allows for more employees to try their hand at leadership
  • allows for more temporary roles that can frequently shift based on who is performing
  • employees that are simultaneously leading in one project and following in another will develop a more complete understanding of effective leadership
  • breaking projects up into bite-size pieces makes failure more palatable, and more affordable.

Here are two versions of the research report.

The Future of Visual Learning?

I stumbled upon a fantastic TED conference video presentation on a couple of pieces of technology - Photosynth and Seadragon, developed by Blaise Aguera y Arcas, now an architect at Microsoft Live Labs. It's fascinating. All the information is visible on an one explorable screen rather than having links or pop-up windows with additional info. It can be viewed via multiple angles and magnifications, allowing you to look around corners or "fly" in for a close look.

When I saw this I thought about the concept of visual learning and how it could completely change e-learning. Think about a wide variety of learning content and delivery vehicles (job aids, EPSS, course content, maps, diagrams, mind maps, etc) all seamlessly tied together so the user can explore them all by using this technology without having multiple websites, web pages, pop-ups, links, etc. It would offer an incredible breadth and depth of content at the fingertips of a learner along with the engagement factor of explorational learning.

Conceptual Learning: Depth over Breadth

I just read a great article in the latest issue of Time magazine (December 18) - How to Bring Our Schools Out of the 20th Century. There were a couple of concepts that were mentioned that I have discussed in past blog entries.

1. Google Factor: Avoiding overload of extraneous information in the modern Google world. From Time's article . . . "Any number of old-school assignments--memorizing the battles of the Civil War or the periodic table of the elements--now seem faintly absurd. That kind of information, which is poorly retained unless you routinely use it, is available at a keystroke."
2. Socratic Learning - Depth over Breadth: According to Time, American students are outperformed on math and science tests by students from countries such as Singapore, Belgium and Sweden. "Classes in these countries dwell on key concepts that are taught in depth and in careful sequence, as opposed to a succession of forgettable details so often served in U.S. classrooms. Textbooks and tests support this approach. "Countries from Germany to Singapore have extremely small textbooks that focus on the most powerful and generative ideas," says Roy Pea, co-director of the Stanford Center for Innovations in Learning. These might be the key theorems in math, the laws of thermodynamics in science or the relationship between supply and demand in economics." Depth rather than breadth. Students in America are gorged with huge amounts of information via overstuffed textbooks and zoom through topics and subtopics as school systems attempt to meet a variety of state standards.

Unfortunately American school systems have made a huge impact on corporate training & education. As we have all seen, a typical corporate e-learning course is overloaded with  content such as pages upon pages from regulations manuals, history of products and processes, or the steps to use a function of software that the audience will use twice in the course of a year and has no chance in hell of remembering two weeks later. 

The Learning Business

“The next great American business is the learning business. This business is the child of entertainment & information technology using information architecture as its guidebook. Conversation is the most natural, effective, yet most complex mode of human connection. The goal of conversation is understanding between the participants.” -- Richard Saul Wurman

Playing Games

Fun is an important part of the engagement factor that enterRETAINment brings to the table. Bing Gordon, Chief Creative Officer for video game maker Electronic Arts discusses playing and learning on Bill Moggridge's website Designing Interactions.

According to Bing:

• play is a core human/mammal value
• lion cubs learn to hunt  and fight by playing together
• pre-adolescents play games looking for power, freedom from control of parents and teachers, and skill development
• teenagers play story games to explore alternative identities for themselves as they prepare for turning 18-19 and choosing their life direction
• adults play games for mental stimulation, fun and the goal of self improvement

Real Stories - Real People

“A great instructor touches the students emotionally,” according to Allison Rossett, long time professor of Educational Technology at San Diego State University, using “vivid, real people” in e-learning. She suggests creating stories that involve people similar to those taking the course . . . “Real people confronting real dilemmas, and doing it under real stress, with all the real surrounding constraints and conditions that the learner deals with.” She feels that when an emotional connection is made, the likelihood increases that the student will be able to transfer the knowledge and use it in the real-world setting.