Showing posts with label learning. Show all posts

Millennials, learning and PokémonGo




Where have you been if you haven’t heard of PokémonGo? I’m a millennial that collected Pokémon cards and played the red, blue, gold and silver games on my colour gameboy in the late 1990’s and early 2000’s. I got a little excited when I heard the game was going to launched (even though I am now 25).

If you find yourself still asking what is PokémonGo here is a little intro. It’s an augmented reality game available on IOS and android devices, it uses GPS and camera to capture, battle and train virtual creatures. When the GPS finds a Pokémon it shows on the screen as if it were in the same real-world location. You catch it and it's yours. You collect as many as possible and the game is to catch them all, all 250 of them (especially Pikachu). Looks like I will be doing a lot of walking to find them then!

I wanted to understand why I am so addicted and engrossed into the game, what were the factors that were affecting this and could these elements apply to how we approach and think about learning. So here were my top 3 points that have helped to drive my interest and addiction to the game.

1. Ease of use: 

It’s on my iPhone (basically an attachment to most people now), I open it when I can. So, on my walk for lunch, on the train, just as and when I need it. It’s also simple, straightforward and with little instruction I understand the objectives of the game. Removing all barriers of me accessing it and getting involved.


Learning link:

So looking at this point from a learning perspective. If learning is available when I need it and has limited complexity on its objectives, it removes barriers to get involved. Not saying this increases the motivation towards learning, but it certainly doesn’t block it.


2. Part of a community:

Being part of the game allows me to be part of a Pokémon community which helps to drive my involvement in the game. I talk about it amongst peers and would feel excluded if I wasn’t part of the Pokémon world.

Learning link:

This feeling of being part of a community and being connected is certainly a characteristic of the millennial world, but I think as the growth of technology has allowed us to be a more connected world we are seeing all generations stating that a community element is something that is desired in learning. This ‘network effect’ makes learning interactive and participatory, allowing people to learn from others experience through discussing and experiencing content together.


3. Personal:

Although I am part of the wider Pokémon community, it’s my game. I move through the levels as I wish and only interact with the parts that are of interest to me. I move through it at my own pace and don’t feel pressure to get into all parts of the game.

Learning link:

Having something that I choose how and when to work through at my own pace and only interact with what is relevant to me, reduces the feelings of pointless learning. It also allows for the time spent on learning to be more productive as what I am focused on is more relevant to me as a learner.

I think these 3 points are an important take-away from PokémonGo. Looking at ease of use, community elements and personalisation of learning can help to make for more engaging learning environments according to research. However, this article and research that was done for it is all from a millennials perspective. Do we think these elements we have discussed for learning is something that applies across all generation and not just millennials?

A Night at the Museum, Our view on Curation








I was working for a client and curating content for them from the internet to use as a resource for their learners. I love doing this work but in terms of efficiency I can’t claim to be making a profit. I will explain why this is the fault of the ‘hyperlink’ not my fault!

To do this properly you need to assess the material for suitability, you need to have criteria for selecting people for the materials. Don’t get fooled by thinking this is an easy, cheap or one off activity for your learners.

 Think of curating for a museum. You may have a lot of ‘stuff’ but it doesn’t mean a visitor leaves your museum having had a positive experience. In fact quite the reverse, with too much to look at, with no discernible connection or symbiosis between the items the visitor leaves feeling bewildered, exhausted and frustrated. With most modern museums less is more, they leave space for thought, the footnotes are brief and there is a pathway which tells an evolving story as the visitor progresses through the well curated space.
We can learn a lot from how museums have changed over time. They know what works for their visitors and their visitors, like ours, are learners. 

So what are the ‘musts’ for meaningful curation?


  • Know your audience, how do they learn? What do they need to know and what do they want to know?

  • What does your company want the learners to get out of your curated materials? It might be hard fact absorption, it could be to build a collective base line of understanding in the company or it could be developing a sense of curiosity in the learners for learning outside of their job role. Is it their objective to build a learning organisation? 

  • Do you need to create a pathway of developmental levels? (a good idea) Be open minded to the learner who will access the highest level first to see if they can understand the topic at the advanced level before dipping into to the lower levels. 

  • Add texture to the learning. Look for videos, blogs, articles, infographics, and LinkedIn communities. Research papers and free courses, published dissertations, book reviews and Ted Talks, home-made videos from your own SME’s. Vary the tone from the serious to the lighthearted and vary the length from the short hit from an infographic or a 15 hour Open University free course.

  • You might want to create ‘boxed sets’ of learning, perfect for the binge learner who will work through them in order looking for a plot twist in each article and enable them to create their own taxonomy from the learning you put in front of them. 

  • At all times focus on quality, it is fine to have content which looks at topics from opposing standpoints but make sure it is correct; there is a lot of incorrect information on the internet so stick to reliable sources.                                                                       
  • Nobody likes governance but if you are putting up information from the internet ask people not to click on advertisements, explain this is curation of ‘free materials’ and not to sign up for anything which costs money and set a rule about the purchase of books following a book review.



So what about the hyperlinks and my efficiency? I get so absorbed in the material itself and the thirst to know where things are referenced from, I follow every hyperlink there is. Walking through my own endless museum of facts, history, and futurism and without ever having to stand in line to view something is my idea of a happiness (possibly my MD might want to put a closing time on my museum.)




For help curating materials for any subject for your organisation contact me – it will be a pleasure to help you. Rachel.kuftinoff@knowledgepool.com

Our Digital Learning Infographic

We speak a lot about the need to support learners with digital. But never see a lot about how we actually do this, what steps do we take to move towards a learning approach that is supportive of digital? The Learning Boffins have captured in an infographic the key phases that need to be considered when going on the digital transformation journey. Take a look........

How L&D can model Leicester City FC to do more with less



First things first, let me just take a moment to congratulate Leicester City FC on achieving the impossible this season.  I'm sure by now you have all read numerous articles and posts relating to how Leicester went from narrowly avoiding relegation from the Premier League last season.  To starting the season as most likely to be relegated this season, with 5,000:1 odds of winning the league.  Only to prove all the doubters wrong by winning the league with a few games to spare.  Much has been said and written regarding how this miraculous feat has been achieved but what can L&D in particular learn from our new Premier League champions?

Winning on budget

A major talking point about the Leicester success is how little the team cost compared with the other teams around them in the league.  The table below shows the cost of Leicester and the other teams:

Club Spend
Manchester City £443m
Manchester United £421m
Chelsea £322m
Liverpool £272m
Arsenal £241m
Tottenham £183m
Leicester £57m

The difference between the top 6 teams and Leicester for spend is tangible.  For example Manchester City spent 7.8 times the amount of money on their team last season.  In fact out of 20 teams in the Premier League, Leicester were 17th on the list in terms of spend whereas the table above shows the top 6 teams.  So what can we take from this?

Spending money is no guarantee of success.  All to often in L&D it is about creating a 'shiny' new training programme to meet the needs of the business the question has to be...do you need a programme with all the bells and whistles to achieve the business goals?  or even, do we already have something in our catalog that can serve the same purpose?

Leicester have managed with minimal investment and working with what they had available in the squad.  They have perfected their winning strategy by understanding what skills their current players have and how best to utilise this resource to achieve their goals.


Use a strategy to match your strengths

One of the contributing factors to Leicesters success relates to the strategy employed over the course of a season.  In very basic terms the strategy revolved around:

1.  Concede as few goals as possible
2.  Score on the counter attack

The first strategy may seem straight forward however implementation is something entirely different.  Leicester conceded the 4th lowest number of goals throughout the season but the more impressive figure is that in 42% of their games they did not concede a single goal.  Couple this with the fact that they only lost 3 games all season shows that they were great at keeping goals out and even when they did concede they were getting goals of their own to make up for it.  In actual fact it was not until the later half of the season where they actually started to achieve clean sheets en mass.  Prior to Christmas they had conceded 24 goals.  Since Christmas they have only conceded 10.  Simply by focusing on improving defense with an already relatively competent back four they have now set records for the number of consecutive clean sheets.


With regards to the second strategy, they have made best use of the speed they have upfront.  Jamie Vardy has just won a player of the year award for his contribution to this years campaign.  The key to his success is largely based upon his rapid pace and ability to get in behind the defense of the opposition.  This suits the counter attacking style of play to a tee and Vardy's 22 goals confirm this.  He is also partnered with Riyad Mahrez with 22 goals and 11 assists of his own which further adds to the counter attacking capability.

The learning here is that an L&D function should take the time to understand what it is doing well and play to it's strengths.  For example if you have a LMS that is great at delivering results in some areas and not in others, consider focusing your attention and strategy around making all content  delivered via that LMS as good as it can be.  Perhaps even consider using the LMS as a method for communicating other business information and really make it an integral part of the learners daily process.  What ever your strategy, aligning it to your strengths rather than starting from scratch on your deficiencies may produce faster business results.




Maintain consistency when you are successful

Leicesters approach this season could be summed up by the tried and tested phrase of "it isn't broke, don't fix it!".  In his previous stint as manager at Chelsea, Claudio Ranieri was nicknamed "The Tinkerer" for his constant changing of the starting squad.  This year he has changed his squad less than any other team in the league.  This is partly down to the consistent high performance of the team as well as the limited depth of talent in the squad compared to the larger teams.  However the fact remains that Leicester have been one of if not the most consistent team this season.  This consistency has meant that positive feelings of winning as well as training day activity is built upon week on week with largely the same number of players.  This has lead to all players having a greater understanding of the others in the team and what they are collectively trying to achieve either that game or across the season.

Building on my previous hypothetical example regarding LMS systems, if you are having success with a specific platform then it would be wise to stick to one platform and perfect it.  All too often I have seen learning communities with a plethora of different LMS's, portals, hubs, etc to navigate in order to access learning.  Not only is this inefficient from a maintenance perspective, the learning experience becomes fragmented and arduous.  One platform would provide a single point of access for all learning as well as consistent messaging and process for learning.


Anything is possible

The final piece of learning relates to the power of belief.  At Christmas many pundits were stating that Leicester wouldn't win the league despite being top of the table at that point of the year.  The only people that really truly believed they could were the team themselves.  Now at the end of the season so much can be said about how important it is to believe that you can achieve something, even when others say you cant.  I have observed, over a number of years, that change or adoption of new methodology can be hampered by a variety of limiting beliefs.  They may be similar to some of the following:

  • • We don't have the budget
  • • The learning community are too busy to learn something new
  • • It will take too long to change
  • • What about or existing processes
  • • The transition will be too difficult

These limiting beliefs can stop you implementing a process or initiative that will improve learning or business performance but why should they.  If you could be more like Leicester and have a belief that anything is possible and that what you are trying to achieve will benefit the business then forge ahead with conviction and purpose.


Final thoughts

Over the following days and weeks there will be countless articles and posts written about Leicesters miracle title run.  In each of these articles there will be new analysis and insight into how the impossible was made possible.  Perhaps the final point is a simple one.  This year Leicester were a great example of how the end product can be greater than the sum of its parts.  I heard a pundit describe the team as having not just one player who had a had a great season but as a team that had all its players have a great season.  At the end of the day it would seem that hard work, dedication and a commitment to a common goal really are a recipe for success.

Get back to the 70's






 When I started work in adult learning it was back in the day you worried if a bulb would blow in the overhead projector, you carried a crate of ‘stuff’ into the training room and flip chart under your arm, so I see myself as a traditional trainer. I believed totally in formal learning and the need  for me and my trainers in my company was perpetuated and grown by my immovable belief. I saw 70:20:10 as a threat to all I loved; the smell of the felt tip pens, being the ‘sage on stage’ and teaching, teaching, teaching!

What I didn’t understand was that I was part of a long learning chain. My learning chain was one that started with a conversation with someone who perceives there is a need and ends up with improvements being made by the person who has to do the job. All the way through the process the person who is least involved is the individual who has to make the changes to their behaviour or learn new skills. As we all know a chain is only as strong as its weakest link ….. Was I the weakest link?  I would like to think not but in the chain inevitably there was a weak link. It might have been in understanding the goal, having a crystal clear objective,  in doing the needs analysis or in the instructional design. When you opt for formal training the learning chain is longer than it has to be in my opinion. It is as if the ‘solutionising’ has been done to the leaner, not for them. 

That is quite rude and I don’t mean it to be, in fact there are so many L&D departments who make this work for them and they engage their learners and care for them more than you would believe possible. What I am coming out in support of is the 70 in the 70:20:10 model and as an old fashioned talk and chalk trainer I never expected to do that. But the reason I am now an advocate of the model  is that it shortens the learning chain and illuminates the weakest link.

Reflect back to ancient history when apprenticeships were the norm, (400’s to 1400’s) were widely used training practices. The solution for learning was all about the relationship between the expert and the learner. Then as now an apprentice has a long term goal and the apprentice learns on the job.  This is a much shorter chain, with less opportunity for misinterpretation of the outcome required and immediate assessment by the SME.  

During the 1800’s in the industrial revolution fast up skilling became necessary to build the workforce as quickly as possible. Workers moved from the agricultural skills they had seen used all their lives to unknown skills.  This started the practice of Vestibule training where rooms were set up with all the machinery found on the factory floor and an SME would put the trainees through their paces.  This was also known as ‘Near the Job Training’. This was a slightly longer learning chain and relied on the SME being able to recreate on the job conditions but gave them the benefit of not interrupting the productivity.
Skip forward to the 1940’s and Job Instruction Training. Step by step (structured) on the job training method in which a trainer (1) prepares a trainee with an overview of the job, its purpose, and the results desired, (2) demonstrates the task or the skill to the trainee, (3) allows the trainee to mimic the demonstration on his or her own, and (4) follows up to provide feedback and help[1]  Again a short chain. The argument against JIT is that originally it was used for manual work. My response would be that most jobs require understanding and then there is a physical output of some kind. Even customer service has a physical output so I am now firmly converted to the 70.Keep the chain as short as possible; don’t overcomplicate a learning process we pretty much had nailed back in 400 BC.


Rachel Kuftinoff
Learning Consultancy Director

[1] Read more: http://www.businessdictionary.com/definition/job-instruction-training.html#ixzz471LSe5ik

How to train for a Half Marathon in a Learning Consultants World!


So I am starting Spring with the longest run I have done in 2 years. On April 3rd I will be running Reading Half Marathon and because I thought ‘it would be fun’ I have also entered Vienna Half Marathon the following week (at least that one is in a beautiful Capital city).

But it got me thinking about how I have been getting to this point. I know what I need in terms of my training. I know that it’s likely that I can do the mileage because I am a frequent runner of distances of 6-10 miles, but psychologically in prep for both of these I needed to break that 10 mile barrier so I could settle nerves. Plus I knew that my running gait had shifted and as result was in need of a new pair of trainers, that I run well when I don’t consume too much caffeine and my weakness is hills,. Once I got the new trainers, minimised the caffeine, and scheduled in hill training and run over 10 miles I knew I could relax (a little).
So here I am a few days before the first half and have done all of those areas key training areas and I am now well into the best part of a running programme, I’m sure runners will agree, tapering.

It got me thinking about my approach to this and how this actually relates to learning (sorry but we are consultants!). Understanding my training needs from the beginning and early on allowed me to focus on specifics that suit me to give a better performance rather than just do a general programme. If I had followed a generic programme I would have ‘sheep-dipped’ and would have focused on parts of my running that probably didn’t need to change or wasn’t a weakness of mine. But because early on I understood exactly what I need as an individual to give a better performance I created a bespoke approach to tackling what’s ahead.  
In terms of the learning relationship we know instances when learning has been rolled out without actually understanding what learners will need to improve performance, it is merely just assumed at times. Could you say for each piece of learning rolled out a thorough training needs analysis has been conducted? Sheep-dipping learners can be costly and largely inefficient. Talk to us about training needs analysis in learning if you want to know more. 

And as for me I will let you know whether my TNA for running was accurate or not next week…
Sophie Cannon
Strategic Market Analyst

Formula 1 Team Principle = Strategic Learning Consultant


I was talking with a friend of mine the other day that I have not seen since before Christmas.  It was great to catch up and of particular interest to him was my new job as a Strategic Learning Consultant.  I proceeded to tell him what my role was and who I worked with but I could tell it was falling on deaf ears.  However it was at this moment I had an epiphany relating to how I could help him understand my world.

We both share a love of Formula 1 and already that evening we had engaged in number of conversations relating to the upcoming season.  It dawned on me that my new job was just like that of the Team Principle in an F1 team or alternatively assistant to the Team Principle.  Now for those of you who do not follow F1 I will briefly explain the role played by the Team Principle.  F1 is a team based sport.  However, F1 is unique in the fact that, within a team there are two sub teams, one for each driver.  Each sub team may have 30-40 members that have roles ranging from mechanic, pit stop crew, PR, catering, dieticians, physio therapists, managers, etc.  And this is not including the army of designers and engineers back at the factory.  It is the Team Principles job to manage all these individuals to achieve not only the goals of the broader team but also that of their sub team.  Frankly it’s an extremely difficult job fraught with complexity, politics and the balancing of often rather large egos.  And all this is before you devise and implement a strategy in an attempt to win a race.  Essentially the team principle is balancing a lot of plates.

So the question is how does this relate to what I do?  The balancing of plates is something every Head of L&D must do.  This may be establishing the learning demand for the upcoming year, implementing a new LMS or even organising their curriculum.

The “Learning Consultant” part of my job title relates to my ability to help L&D functions make the best, most informed decisions in relation to all the plates they have in the air.  In many cases this will include understanding the impact that a change will have on the other plates that are still spinning.  An example of this may be providing insight on the benefits of implementing an LMS and then beyond that understanding the types of MI that can be generated as result of using the system.  In the F1 world this would be the same as understanding the effect of putting different tyres on the car may improve the handling of the car.


The “Strategic” in my job title refers to the fact that all consultancy I provide will create L&D transformation that in turn directly delivers against the business goals.  Taking the previous example of an LMS and the MI it can generate.  The strategic bit is how we can ensure that the correct MI data is captured that enables L&D to demonstrate how the training held on the system is supporting business growth and inform future decisions relating to learning.   In a similar fashion putting new tyres on a car can improve handling but may increase the number of pit stops a car needs to make so does this benefit the overall race strategy?

At its most basic I am someone who can see the broader picture and understand that L&D is more than just delivering ‘shiny’ training programmes to the masses.  It’s an understanding that training needs to deliver against business goals as must all the other components that make up an L&D function such as governance, processes, technology, etc.  In essence my job is to help your L&D department run like a well-oiled machine, or even a championship winning F1 team!

Tom Ridley
Strategic Learning Consultant


 
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