Digital Learning and Splayd Learning

I started a new Instructional Design project last week. It’s my favourite kind of project with just the right mix of playfulness (Ilinx with a bit of mimesis, if you want to get technical).

It’s made me think, a lot. Here’s three things I’ve thunk:

It’s no longer useful to think of what I do – at the moment – in terms of eLearning. And probably never was.

If you work in the messy world¹ then eLearning’s only useful function is as Performance Support or mnemonic/study aid. For me, this means it has to be short (or capable of rapid and/or non-linear navigation), specific, indexable, open, shareable and customisable (or, at least, capable of being annotated). Most eLearning is none of those.

Nick Shackleton-Jones says this:

What I eventually discovered (and confirmed experimentally) was that it was perfectly possible to apply a great many theoretical approaches (such as learning styles, modes of representation, proximal development, meta-cognitive approaches) and build something that, ultimately, was no better than reading a book. In fact, the market was full of examples of really poor elearning content which nevertheless adhered to standard ‘instructional design’ principles.

My view is that, ultimately, most eLearning isn’t even as good as reading a book.

We can point to occasions when, as it turned out, eating people was the right thing to do. But they are so few and far between, relative to our general experience, that it makes little sense to say, “Eating people is wrong – except when you’re trapped in the High Andes as a result of a plane crash through no fault of your own.”

eLearning feels wrong.

It’s mostly been a step sideways (or backwards) rather than progress. For people working in the messy world, I think the right way to go is collaboration, Performance Support and Learnscaping.

So I’ve taken to describing this project as Digital Learning. We’re really trying to do something interesting here, with hermeneutic depth, wabi-sabi and breadth of scholarship.

Do I need another piece of jargon in my life? Probably not, but it’ll make those introductions at parties much easier. So, what do you do . . . ?

All learning projects should have this as the first action on the To Do list. No exceptions:

Spend a day on The Google. Just like a motivated learner would.

If you can’t beat The Google, go home.

(Back when I used to do a lot of training commissioning, I once asked a group of potential associates this question: if I locked my delegates in a cupboard for a day and asked them to think very hard about the subject matter of your course, would they be any worse off for missing your training? My favourite response was a guy who started to say something, did a double take and then just drifted off into thought. Of all the people there, he’s probably the only one I’d hire these days.)

I saw Roger Hart give a talk called the Spork-Platypus Average at TCUK10. And I find myself using his analogy, in my head all the time.

It’s simple. Here’s a platypus:



They are, basically, awesome. They’re venomous mammals who hunt by electrolocation.

This makes them hard to categorise.

And here’s some sporks:



Sporks are anything but awesome. They’re kind of like Swiss Army Knives designed by committee.

They are, however, very easy to categorise.

As I’ve begun to discover recently, it’s much easier to sell a spork than a platypus.

[Update: this might be it, partly, from Clive Shepherd. I think the real Digital Learning will look a lot like an RPG with courses as a dungeon. With Wabi-Sabi.]

¹ By definition, the messy world is hard to define. But that sounds like ducking the question. I’m using it to mean Knowledge Work ie non-repeatable, creative stuff

Images: Towards a Grand Unity of Cutlery from Les Jones

Doug Belshaw’s presentation on Models of Learning has some good stuff (full disclosure: this blog is included in the talk) on breadth of scholarship and Puentedura’s SAMR model (a big influence in my thinking of why eLearning has been such a disappointment). If you’re a practitioner, he’s also done something really interesting with his screencast using Spezify. Rapid eLearning indeed.

Roger Hart’s presentation is here:

The Spork / Platypus Average: Content strategy at Red Gate Software

View more presentations from Roger Hart.

And finally, it’s worth remembering that sometimes what looks like a spork may well be a runcible spoon.

Source: hypergogue.net