Can our values be an indicator to how we want to learn digitally?

By Steve Dineen and Art McCracken

Personalisation will always be a big part of how we learn, and although previous learning styles or preference models are continuously debunked, that doesn’t mean that the idea of  different people having different learning preferences is wrong. A long time ago, in a galaxy far far away, I was a stand up Technical Trainer and used to consistently run into the challenge that within one classroom, different people would want to learn in different ways. Some people were curious. They asked many questions in advance of the material being covered within the curriculum and also asked questions outside the curriculum, which were still connected to our lesson. Others would not respond well to these questions being answered in the classroom. This group strongly believed I should only teach in a structured, logical way where the manual is not just a guide but a bible. Ultimately what I took away from this was that you want to keep your audience engaged and motivated. This type of scenario, although especially hard in a classroom setting, should be much easier to manage with a deeper understanding of human behaviour and today's technology.

There must be ways to understand individuals better, to create a learning experience that feels better for them and creates greater engagement and higher performance - after all online advertisers have been successfully doing this to increase conversion rates in revenue for a number of years now. It may be that in the learning tech world we just haven’t found the right model and there is so much uncomfortableness with defining people in groups rather than celebrating our uniqueness. Not to mention the fact that most learning theory preferences have been debunked many times over but just because the previous models were wrong, doesn't mean they should stop our adventure to keep asking questions and experimenting to push us forward.

I believe, one of the needs for the corporate learning world is to have an environment where each individual is naturally motivated to learn. What is needed are technologies that both give enterprise learners the flexibility to learn in the way they want in context to that moment. The system needs to understand the difference between two individuals so well that although both of their personalities and needs are different, they are equally hyper engaged with the experience due to the flexibility built into the system. This will enable the two individuals to interact with the system in an individual and preferential way in all contexts to access what they need, when they need it.

On a personal level, I consume anything and everything that will help create new ideas which can aid in the thinking to solve problems like these. I feed my domain knowledge with everything from NLP to AI. I know any breakthrough thinking in the area I am most passionate about will be inspired from the intersection between the areas of human behaviour and technology. Alongside that, my mother taught me a lifelong lesson, which was if you want to learn something, find the best person to teach you. When I recently met Art McCracken, it was one of those meetings when you get hyper energised as both of us recognised that we could potentially both be a piece of the jigsaw on the learning puzzle on personalisation and engagement that many of us are trying to solve and evolve. 

I’ve also held a big belief that our choices and decisions are driven by our personal values and that if you understand how a person ranks their values, you will more often than not understand what decision they will make, given their current context. Given my curious nature, I have noodled on the idea upon whether there was a way to fast track the understanding of a person's values to enhance their learning experience and provide more choices for them to interact with on a learning platform. This would ensure that their learning experience is more suited to their values and their context, much like the needs of those students I had in my classroom a long time ago.

Now for those academics out there, don’t tear us apart, what Art and I are going to put forward in this article is a theory based on our experience, and it's not peer reviewed or data tested. It's an early hypothesis, an idea for constructive discussion, one which we intend to potentially later test with people and to use with data science. We hope you find the article interesting and welcome your feedback.

Art McCracken: A Background To The Four Lenses Personal Values Model

Before we get started, it’s important to note, I am not a fan of profiling systems in the least bit. I believe they are often misused and misrepresented as absolutes and fixations. I believe they can be restrictive in an individual's growth journey. I believe the classifications can be thrown around like a badge of honour providing justification at times, for less than savory behaviour and a pass for abstract engagement. That being said, I believe there is a maturity in the applied learning of tendencies and possible aggregate indicators for a community, if it allows for systemic contribution and less contrived development.

The Four Lenses is just that, a systemic view and aggregate insight into four archetypal temperaments. A tendency mapping if you will, found in the application of Nathan Bryce’s Insight Personality Instrument, and has contributory roots found in many of the well known and historic contributors to human behaviour study and assessment. 

 In its simplest form, it helps us understand quickly and usefully, four distinct community identifiers which collectively describe the common values, strengths, joys and needs of those communities. Quite simply, it’s a quick way for us to understand the way we view the world around us through our own unique lens composition, and more importantly, how others around us might view their world.  

 When it comes to our view of the world around us, it's typically shaped by experiences that we've had in the past, adopted circumstances, and any biases that may have been developed along the way. This collective experience, and consequently rooted individual paradigm, is represented by the things we value or believe in, strengths we might possess, experiences that bring us happiness, or joy, and the things that we inherently need to feel safe. 

 What the researchers have found is that they've been able to summarise these lenses into four categories. These categories represent situational tendency. Particular to the Four Lenses model, Bryce chose to assign each temperament a colour, as a simple identifier and quick reference point for ease of use and discussion.  

 The four class identifiers are as follows: GOLD, ORANGE, BLUE, and GREEN. Each class is tokenised by a summary of hierarchical values or dominant lens. Those classified as GOLD dominant, value order and structure above all else. Those classified as ORANGE dominant, value freedom. BLUE dominant, value relationships. And GREEN dominant value competency. According to David Keirsy’s work, the general population would be categorised numerically as follows: Gold: 44%, Orange: 40%, Blue: 10%, and Green: 6%. 

Each person has their own unique lens composition which is non-exclusive, and at times variant based on external levels of safety and control. Consider this a tendency mapping rather than an absolute. As an example, one might be order and structure dominant, with relationships as a secondary lens. When the concept of freedom is challenged, the coping mechanism can become shortened and exact and used as a control pathway back to freedom through challenges to competency and data as a proof point. 

When it comes to learning styles, we find the following characteristics by class:

For order and structure based learners (gold), abstract principles tend to be more difficult to comprehend and they are reluctant to dive into anything that does not have an adequate level of definition or structured pathway to it. Progress as an option must be accompanied by a set of guidelines with specific task oriented milestones leading from point A to point B. It is suggested that many educators fit into this profile and create structured formal learning in the way they would want to receive it, which is likely what happened with the first generation of online learning with fixed learning experiences that learners cannot deviate from. It's no surprise that the standard that defines most corporate elearning - SCORM - was created by the (US) military and not surprising that it is not engaging for the majority of the world as it likely pushes against the values of those with different preferences.

 For competency based learners (green), learning is a lifelong commitment and so in the classroom or online, they will require intellectual conversation, intellectual stimulation, and freedom to develop their own thoughts. A path of purely structured learning designed for order and structure is less likely to satisfy their needs.

 An instructor’s competency might be in early question as the pecking order of genius and application are vetted. Wise use of time and efficient routes to learn will be vital for engagement success as well as an opportunity to demonstrate knowledge and acumen as a contributor of record.  It will be interesting in our research to see whether people with these values are more natural online collaborators and contributors.

 Freedom based learners (orange) tend to engage more through hands-on experience that involves seeing and doing, and often need space to move around to get physically involved with the learning process. They want to apply their learning here and now, and be recognised for it. At Fuse, we refer to this as active engagement (e.g. search, learn and apply for learning in the flow or take a task designed in your digital world and then apply offline).

 Learners in this class are socially adept to front-of-the stage presentation and engagement, it will be all-eyes on the educator and carved out recognition allowed for this class. If you want to create community influencers, then it's easiest to identify for this group first that showcasing their knowledge and expertise will shine the light on them and confirm their significance publically. 

 Relationship based learners (blue) focus more often on people and relationships, so when it comes to social learning offline or online they enjoy this the most because of the community aspect. It's a place where they can be in relationships and in conversation. In a digital word these relationships can now extend across time zones, geography and even language and supercharge their need for human stronger human connections versus the first element of digital learning (SCORM) which doesn’t allow social interactions as part of a course but only outside of it. 

 There is a cautionary tale however. While this model provides some insight into tendencies, it is not and should not be used as an absolute or manipulative tool for narrowed or closed ceiling engagement. As companies in today’s marketplace continue to solve for engagement, those who seek to engage others on their terms and not their own, will find massive value and dedication to the service and the company when the learner feels safe and understood as it pertains to their own unique values, strengths, joys and need composition. Allowing the learners tendencies to manifest themselves, as they naturally lean into exchange and contribution, is a much more mature way to allow for unfettered engagement, and is at the very heart of democratized learning. Organisations must recognize that their traditional forced methods of compliant engagement, and defined pathways, could be long overdue for an overhaul. Consequently, the overhaul might call for less control and a cultural shift towards a new age of learning and development .  

It all brings up an interesting dynamic when we overlay it into Fuse’s initiatives in the marketplace, and the type of clients that are attracted to the Fuse platform. These tend to be organisationally mature, and aware of the fact that they need to engage people on their own terms. They also understand the power of data. If they can identify through data a learning experience that will successfully resonate with an individual, then they are in a perfect position to hand over a checklist (gold), or a highly social community (blue), a quick way to find knowledge (green), or a less structured space and the freedom (orange) to change and choose their own preference as the system offers that degree of flexibility.

 In reality, the Four Lenses is just one of many ways to simplify looking at learning experiences. But in the learning platform marketplace, we’re aware and interested and we’re enjoying helping leaders to craft these experiences for the benefits of being able to impact and influence different styles of learning, which creates better frequent engagement and higher measurable performance. 

Identifying Learning Experiences in the Real World

Art and I had a really interesting conversation with Andy from Avon, where we hypothesised between the three of us whether one of the contributing factors to the success of the AVON Connect program was in part due to the theories above. AVON has a million beauty entrepreneurs accessing the platform each year, the monthly engagement levels are unprecedented and we are keen to see whether this is because there is a match between the personal values of an entrepreneur and the freedom to learn in the way they want within the platform. Data tells they are choosing to access 95% of the time informally (e.g searching for the bite of learning they need at the moment of need, watching user-generated content or engaging in conversation around the content) rather than focusing on completing formal courses (which they can do too). Using the theories above, entrepreneurs like myself often fall into the freedom bucket (orange) and no shocker that the foundation of fuse was designed in a way that I want to learn, which is in my own way and rarely from beginning to end in a predefined path.

In context, I sold my previous company over 10 years ago which built formal structured SCORM courses for many of the world's biggest companies and ironically I never managed to complete one course. However I have passed over 100 exams on technical subjects from tech companies like Cicso and Microsoft, so like AVONs beauty entrepreneurs, I can learn and am a lifelong learner but giving me one defined path that I can't move away from feels like sitting in a straight jacket. Likewise, the data from AVON tells us the people with this frequent access behaviour who are choosing their preferred way to learn, sometimes structured, sometimes at the point of need, and sometimes social rather than their previous traditional platforms of retuning every 6 months to complete a course. The performance difference also shows that those beauty entrepreneurs who have the habits of a continuous learner perform 300% higher in sales revenue than their peers that don't, so we are curious to probe and understand why. The answer is not simply for academic purposes but it could unlock further significant business gain, so let's see where this journey takes us and whether future data shows there is merit in going deeper. Until we get there, Art and I would love to hear your thoughts.