No More Typing 101

In one of final presentations as Microsoft chairman, Gates indicated that one of the biggest bets they are making is that

People will increasingly interact with computers using speech or touch screens rather than keyboards - see USA Today article.

There are certainly advantages to that bet (one of the primary ones being the speed at which people will be able to interact with computers). I think the 5 year timeline may be pushing it. This concept is not new, yet mainstream use has still not been realized...but I guess if you have a couple billion dollars to throw at R&D you could make it happen.

Need for ISDers

There has been a lot of recent posts and discussions in the blogosphere regarding the value added of Instructional Systems Designers. Karl Kapp provides a great synopsis and take on the issue. I am not going to try to add another separate entry into the mix, but rather point readers to his existing post and comments...where you can also read more of my comments.

Bottom line...I agree 100% with Karl. Certified/degreed/etc. ISDers are needed...I would add "desperately needed" because the more people take up the ISD role who aren't qualified for it, the more money it will cost, the less business results will be accomplished, and the field will be reduced to a hobby instead of a profession.

The Cost of Technology

Thought this was an interesting, but not surprising, little article (Pound for Pound: Blackberry costs more than an Apache Helicopter).

Are you fascinated with your job?

According to a recent article in the Daily Oklahoman, if you answered "yes" you are in the minority (30% of respondents answered "yes"). The somewhat encouraging news is that 90% want to be fascinated with their job.

Management consultant, Ken Tucker, is coming out with a book later this month that goes into much more detail on his research, but his main discovery is that workers have this amazing desire to want to be fascinated with their job. He found that fascination impacts productivity. One quote from the article:

A symptom of (fascination) is they (employees) lose track of time. It's getting lost in what you do. It's being energized doing a task when other people are being fatigued.

This begs the question...how do we increase our fascination with our jobs? I can honestly say that some of the best days at work are the ones where I am constantly learning something new and solving complex problems. The impact of how little I knew something going into the day, fascinates me throughout the day.

Centre for Learning & Performance Technologies

Several months ago, I wrote a post on the Centre for Learning & Performance Technologies by Jane Hart. They do a lot of great work on organizing the plethora of tools out on the market. Thanks to a little encouragement from Karyn Romeis, I submitted my Top 10 Tools for 2008 that I find myself using to manage my own learning and/or performance improvement. You can see my list here.

I definitely encourage anyone who is active in the learning community to submit their lists. It's free at it doesn't take a lot of time at all.

Wiihabilitation

A co-worker sent me this article today on how Nintendo's Wii is being used for rehab therapy. Interestingly, patients mention that the normal rehab exercises can be downright boring (note how you can substitute "patients" for "students" and substitute "rehab exercises" for "educational program" to characterize many critiques of education).

Part of me wonders when articles like this will stop receiving press simply because it is not "news" anymore. It's amazing that some people are genuinely surprised that games have something good to offer. Several years ago, people would talk about how games were mentally engrossing (like it was a bad thing), but this article talks about how games that are mentally engrossing actually help the patients because it takes their minds off of the rigor of the exercises.

Mail Tracker

I've never been convinced of a mailing company's encouraging words that I can track my order online. It is true that you can see when the package goes from one distribution point to another, but the tracking number would be useless if the package was actually lost or fell of the truck en route.

That's all about to change...soon you will be able to put a paper-thin GPS device in your mail to really help track your package. The USPS is experimenting with the technology to find bottlenecks and delays in the system, but the article does also highlight the potential of being able to track every movement.

This is really a nice way of seeing how technology can be used to identify performance improvement problems. Bottlenecks! Delays! Lost products! These are not problems that are limited to the mailing industry.

Social Network Failure

Jon Chase from Popular Science recently wrote an article on the etiquette of social networking sites. Ultimately, he is still pro-social networking sites, but he raises a lot of good points about the etiquette on these sites. Excerpt from the article...

Once you’ve joined a social-network site and built up a profile, it becomes a free-for-all. Too many of us think it’s perfectly reasonable to spam complete strangers into joining their network of “friends,” with no introduction or explanation offered. That seems petty, but when you regularly get a dozen daily requests, burnout is inevitable and the whole point is lost—if not the site (anyone out there still hanging on Friendster these days?). Business types get flooded with requests to be Linked In or to vouch for someone, and in the end they un-Link in frustration.

I found myself agreeing with him on many points. Although, I have not "un-Linked In", I have to admit that it hasn't lived up to what I had hoped. I recognize that some of that has to do with my inability to devote time to establishing new and maintaining old connections, but the random invite with no explanation is frustrating. I moved to Gmail about two years ago to get away from the spam that I was getting in my Hotmail account. Unfortunately, I've been playing around with different social networking sites (plus receiving all of the "Great Saving" emails from any number of companies) that I have, in essence, spammed myself.

Instructional Design - If, When, and How Much?

The latest Big Question for the Learning Circuits Blog is:

For a given project, how do you determine if, when and how much an instructional designer and instructional design is needed?

I think the really obvious answer to this question is..."it depends". There are so many variables that play into a performance problem that will change the answers to the if/when/how much questions. How much should you use a developer? Well, it depends on what you're building. How much of an architect should you use to design a house for a family? Well, it depends on what their needs are. All that said...the answer to the "when" question should be "early"...even for the initial analysis because a quality instructional designer will be able to identify if this is, in fact, a project that requires a training intervention. An instructional designer doesn't add much value if he is brought in after the system is developed.

Another variable is the skill of the individual instructional designer. Yes...not all instructional designers are created equally. Some are happy with designing WBT/CBT for the rest of their careers; some have never considered instructional design implications in a game based environment. In 2001, Marc Prensky wrote a popular book "Digital Game Based Learning" where he uses a page to discuss whether or not instructional design is helping or hurting. He uses quotes such as:

Nine times out of ten, if you see a great training program, you'll find it wasn't created by someone schooled in ISD and following that process (actually a Thiagi quote from Training magazine in April 2000).

and

Designing effective learning does not, I believe, require any formal instruction or specialized knowledge. Rather, it takes a thoughtful and creative approach to reaching the desired outcomes.

In reality, Prensky's criticism could be applied to many other disciplines (i.e. you don't need to have any formal instruction or an MBA to be a good project manager). Too often though, the thoughtful and creative approach of an individual is not considered in project planning.

The bottom line is that you can't answer these questions until there is an element of analysis into the problem. I'm afraid that if you had the answers to these questions before an analysis was conducted, you've created a solution before you ever understood the problem.