"How did you do that?" they asked of the young man with the mass of curly light brown hair who was operating the computer. He explained his method, which involved visualising a vast quantity of "pots", one for each integer to be tested - up to 1000, 10 000, or as high as the computer had memory to store.

"Start with the small prime numbers, the ones that we know already, like 1, 2 and 3", he stated. "Miss out 1, but, starting with 2, put a marker in the pots that are multiples of 2. That's an easy set of calculations: 2x2, 2x3, 2x4 etc. Then do the same with 3: 3x2, 3x3, 3x4 etc.

"What's the next pot without a marker? Five. So that's a prime. So, do the same thing with that; put markers in 5x2, 5x3 etc. And the next one? Seven. Same again.

"You keep going until your halfway to your maximum number. After that there's no point, because any number that's left unmarked times 2 will be bigger than your maximum.

"At that point, all the pots that don't have markers will be prime numbers. So, it's just a case of running off a list of those numbers."

It was a simple concept, made possible by a combination of the speed of calculations on the computer and the imagination of the person writing the programme.

After the demonstration, the rest of the group dispersed to their respective computers; to try it out for themselves, to make their game of Snakes run just that little bit faster, or to debug the code they'd spent hours copying in from a magazine.

It was the early 1980's. Micro-computers were just finding their ways into schools, and most teachers (like now) did not have the time or the interest to understand them, or their potential.

We were left to our own devices and quickly discovered how to control these new machines; to model real and abstract situations from physics, and applied and pure maths, to create games, and to play them. Nothing was networked, or attached to sensors or motors. It was just you, your imagination, and the programme.

But we weren't on our own. Some of us grasped some concepts quicker than others, and then demonstrated and explained. Some bought magazines that introduced new ideas. Some went to shows and came back with stories of 16kB RAM packs and 1.2MB floppy disk drives...

As a group we learnt together, but independent of any formal curriculum, and with no support from anyone that you'd recognise as a teacher.

We learnt programming concepts, like loops and procedures. We learnt to be ultra-careful with syntax, to use error messages to help troubleshooting, and to write code together to catch problems quickly.

We learnt about operating systems, directories and files. We learnt that programming with variables meant we could change the way our code behaved by simply changing a handful of settings. We learnt the principles of using one chunk of code many times.

Time moves on, and nearly 30 years later, as I watch my son using Minecraft, I see him learning in the same way. No-one is teaching him, but through a combination of Youtube, the Minecraft wiki, discussing with friends, asking questions, and trial and error he is learning to:

• build virtual worlds with machines and habitats
• manipulate complex graphics files to change the look and feel of the worlds and their characters
• navigate the MacOS directory structure to find the locations for the various graphics files
• create and unpack zip archives
• pack and unpack .jar files to add in code modifications
• search for and find answers to problems in forum postings
• deal with mods that crash Minecraft
• manage a Minecraft server, with its security implications
• manage a Virtual Private Network (Hamachi) so he and his friends can work in the same world

In a similar way to the skills we gained on those Wednesday afternoons, my son and his peers are doing more than unwittingly teaching themselves computer science. They are developing wider thinking and problem-solving skills within a context of sharing, cooperation, peer feedback and self motivated challenges.

What can we learn as teaching and learning professionals from these two examples?

The key is to stop doing the learning for the student. According to Ewan McIntosh, we spend too much of our professional time trying to find ways to shortcut the learning process, which then simply short changes our learners. They become dependent on the professional, and gradually less capable of independent creative thought.

Instead, our job should be one that encourages learners to immerse themselves in the problems that surround them, helps them to synthesise the key information relevant to the challenges into connected ideas, facilitates ideation (the process of generating and collecting ideas), and provides tools and materials that will help them to prototype solutions.

The two videos below, both by Ewan McIntosh, discuss the situation we're currently in, and proposes a solution that is working now around the globe. The solution is called "Design Thinking", a process which encompasses the four components mentioned above: immersion, synthesis, ideation and prototyping.

Yes, it will probably take longer if we let learners spend their time immersing themselves in the problem and all its angles rather than spoon-feeding them the specific parts that the curriculum / training objectives dictate. But don't the benefits of developing self-sustaining, creative problem solvers outweigh that? (Perhaps not if you own a factory, or its modern day, data-processing centre equivalent... or am I simply being unnecessarily cynical?)

The theory

The practice

Via: Nick Shackleton-Jones' challenging post on the future of online learning, where he draws a parallel between elearning and the fax machine:

there will still be times when we need to use it, but the days when it seemed ubiquitous and something everyone needed to have are over. The demise of both have similar roots: overtaken by a flurry of smaller, more agile technologies.

I realise now that I hadn't grasped when Twitter should and shouldn't be used, and how to get the best out of it.

The following two lists are based on my experiences. I'd love to hear from others too.

Do

• Do treat Twitter like your work kitchen, water cooler or staff room. You wouldn't spend all day there, and you wouldn't expect to be aware of every conversation taking place while you weren't there.
• Do dip in every now and again. Have a quick look at what people are talking about.
• Do consider replying to someone if they have said something useful, interesting or stimulating. If there's nothing there of interest to you, then post about something that you've discovered, thought about or found infuriating. It might start a conversation.
• Do make sure your Twitter profile says something about who you are and what you might tweet about, so people know why they might follow you.
• Do follow people you find interesting. It's the equivalent of having people at work that you enjoy hanging out with in the staff room.
• Do add a picture of yourself to your profile. It gives your Tweets a human face. This is true even if you're Tweeting as part of work.
• Do take a break completely from Twitter for a few days. It'll do you good. Real conversations and thinking need more than 140 characters.

Don't

• Don't be afraid to dip out of a conversation. If someone wants to talk to you directly, they'll mention you in a post and you'll be able to reply later.
• Don't tell us everything that's happening in your life. It gets a little boring.
• Don't be afraid to unfollow people if what they are saying gets boring or irrelevant to you at the moment. It's not personal...
• Don't just post links to your company website. I'm sure you're more interesting than that.
• Don't try to read over every conversation that's happened in the past 24 hours. Just focus on the stuff happening now.
• Don't use Twitter to replace reading blogs, journals and newspapers regularly. It's where the deep thinking is taking place. You do have an RSS reader don't you?

• Does your application only work in one make of browser? How is that sustainable when the trend is towards people bringing their own devices?
• Does your application say it works best in a particular screen resolution? You're missing a trick if mobile access doesn't play a part in your application strategy.
• Does your application require ActiveX controls, or similar plugins, to work? Apart from making it browser dependant, this is a sign of out-of-date coding, when, with a modern browser, some JavaScript and CSS, there's little that can't be done. (The obvious exceptions are communication and desktop sharing tools which rely on the plugins to make best use of the available bandwidth and to interact with operating system elements outside of the browser.)
• Does your application force users to learn an interface that runs counter to accepted web conventions? Apart from being inefficient, this sends the message that we don't care about our users.

Do these sound familiar?

One of the sessions at the recent Charles Handy conference was on the topic of "the changing workplace and workforce".

There was nothing majorly new in the content of what was discussed, but it did bring to a head of few topics that I've been pondering on for a while.

Here's a taster of my notes from the session:

On work

The people inside organisations are the holders of the intellectual property (IP).

The organisations simply bribe those people to keep the IP inside the organisation.

Living as a "flea" (an independent contractor) is becoming more popular. In the US now, about 27% of the workforce are fleas.

Life as a flea is more uncertain, but who would really want to be employed?

But fleas need "elephants" (large organisations) who will employ them.

Employing organisations should think of their buildings more like club-houses, with different spaces for meeting, socialising and working. Perhaps something like the Institute of Directors building in Pall Mall

If you have a talent, nobody asks your age.

This is vitally important as state pensions, private pensions and savings become worth less.

Paid work in "retirement" is increasingly important.

"Sensible people reinvent themselves every 10 years."

We should consider a portfolio life, that contains different clients and different kinds of work (paid, gift, study and home) in order to maintain flexibility and to provide resilience in hard times. The balance between the kinds of work changes over time.

On education

Quoted Howard Gardner (who I came across years ago, but put in the same bucket as all the other learning style theories - ie. discredited). My thoughts: Looks like it might still be a useful framework - as long as we don't treat it as a means of labelling children.

Schools should exist to identify what a child is good at (from across all the different "intelligences").

But schools are constrained by exams and the curriculum.

The greatest gift you can give to a child is telling them what they're good at.

Thanks to my friends at Get Abstract, I got an invitation to attend yesterday's Conversation with Charles Handy conference.

This was my first experience of Charles Handy, although I'd been aware of his reputation as a "management guru" for a while. I do tend to be a bit wary of anyone known as a guru, but in this case I was very pleasantly surprised.

The first surprise was that 'conversation' really did mean conversation. I've been rattling on for a long time about events that are no more than presentations being a massive waste of time and money. Learning or behaviour change is far more likely to happen when people participate and engage. Conversations rather than presentations should be the order of the day.

And that's exactly what happened. In each of the four sessions, Charles spoke for a short time, giving some key points, and telling stories. Then he set us a question to consider on our tables. After a while, he opened up the conversation by inviting people to join him on the stage. There was always an empty, third chair on the stage, this allowing a new person to pick up the conversation.

It was a little like the fishbowl method I've previously discussed, but on a smaller scale.

And it felt really effective. As the day went on (and I missed the afternoon so I'm extrapolating a little here), people became more confident and prepared to contribute. By sharing their experiences, it gave the discussion a context, and a dose of reality.

I'll pick up the content of the two sessions I attended in a couple of follow-up posts on 'The future of capitalism' and 'The changing workplace and workforce'.

That's true whether you're a learning intervention designer (including online, print and face-to-face), or whether you're a learning systems designer.

A great model I recently discovered (after a talk with Ben Betts) is the User Experience Honeycomb from Peter Morville.

Within it, he describes seven facets of user experience:

• Useful. As practitioners, we can't be content to paint within the lines drawn by managers. We must have the courage and creativity to ask whether our products and systems are useful, and to apply our deep knowledge of craft and medium to define innovative solutions that are more useful.
• Usable. Ease of use remains vital, and yet the interface-centered methods and perspectives of human-computer interaction do not address all dimensions of web design. In short, usability is necessary but not sufficient.
• Desirable. Our quest for efficiency must be tempered by an appreciation for the power and value of image, identity, brand, and other elements of emotional design.
• Findable. We must strive to design navigable web sites and locatable objects, so users can find what they need.
• Accessible. Just as our buildings have elevators and ramps, our web sites should be accessible to people with disabilities (more than 10% of the population). Today, it's good business and the ethical thing to do. Eventually, it will become the law.
• Credible. Thanks to the Web Credibility Project, we're beginning to understand the design elements that influence whether users trust and believe what we tell them.
• Valuable. Our sites must deliver value to our sponsors. For non-profits, the user experience must advance the mission. With for-profits, it must contribute to the bottom line and improve customer satisfaction.

It's about the whole user experience, from initial awareness through to efficient usage, that counts.

Long answer:

First of all, let's just remind ourselves what SCORM is, and what it's for...

SCORM (Shareable Content Object Reference Model) is a collection of ideas that describes how to put "Content Objects" together in a way that they can be reused (Shared) across multiple, different systems.

These ideas cover:

1. How to describe such content with metadata
2. How the content should be bundled together into a single package
3. How the content should talk to the receiving system
4. How the content should be sequenced to other pieces of content

In corporate learning, (1) and (4) are very rarely used - because they're pretty complicated, which leaves us with very little of use.

The SCORM bundling process takes something very simple (putting files into a zip package) and adds an unnecessary layer of complexity by requiring an XML file which describes the contents of the zip package. If we were using SCORM as was intended, we would be breaking our content down into component parts which would make use of the XML file. But usually we don't.

Similarly, the data transfer between content object and receiving system is usually limited to simple end-of-unit test scores and progress information. How often this is for the benefit of the learner is questionable. SCORM is capable of much more in terms of data transfer, but it's rarely used, often because you start to lose the ability to move content between systems easily.

Comparison with the real world

Outside of corporate learning very few people will have ever heard of SCORM. Yet many people will have used learning content delivery systems such as Youtube, Scribd, Slideshare and Flickr.

All of these take learning content in a particular packaged format and deliver it in the most efficient way possible to the end user.

But these platforms do so much more than we get from our corporate learning systems:

• The content is embedded in the platform, not separate to it (although learners can choose to make the content operate in the whole screen - choice is the key here)
• Therefore the learner always has access to the platform's functionality when they're using the content.
• Around the content, the platform wraps social elements such as comments, ratings, and social media links.
• It also displays metrics such as aggregate ratings and viewing numbers.
• The platform displays other, related content items, based on the metadata and the way other users have behaved.
• The platforms allow users to engage with the content, again through comments, and through adding to personal "playlists" or "favourites".
• The platforms, in some cases, allow users to enhance the content, through the addition of layers containing links and explanatory text.
• The platforms allow users to embed the content in their own websites - the ultimate in shareable content.
• The platforms put "search" at the centre of their user-experience. By exposing as much content as possible to the search engines, they make the content more useful.

All these are for the benefit of the end-user. If they weren't they wouldn't get used, and no-one would publish content to them.

In contrast, how do we use SCORM packages?

• We hide content from search engines, and only allow users to search by metadata (if there is any)
• We treat the platform as secondary to the content, and ignore the user experience of getting to, from and between the content packages.
• We treat learners as if they are in isolation from each other while they're using the content, and forget the social elements of learning.
• We take away anything that will help learners exercise choice (a key element in self-motivated learning), whether that's cues to help them choose (eg. ratings and usage figures), or how they will use the content (eg. full screen, no ability to bookmark in their browser, and, often, no ability to cut and paste)

SCORM isn't necessarily the villain, but it does add a layer of complexity, which is beyond most L&D teams to embrace fully.

For most current corporate elearning, we could easily get by without using SCORM, if our systems allowed it. The ideal, of course, would be for our systems to be able to accept multiple content types (including SCORM) and display them all in a consistent user-centred way, like Slideshare, Youtube etc. It's all learning content, so why is SCORM seen as something that's special and different?

Related posts

SCORM Warning (2008)
Looking for a learner support system (2007)