What is Starting or Stopping your Learning Revolution Right Now?

Sometimes learning just doesn’t happen.

We have Motive, we have Resources, we have Opportunity, and yet we wind up with outcomes that are weak…at best.?

Sometimes our outcomes are so weak that they are actually negative and set us so far back in what we were trying to accomplish that we have to move forward to get to our previous starting place.?

Often our Learning programs start with a main idea or concept that we are trying to proliferate.?

Perhaps it is informational knowledge, perhaps a skill we want them to utilize, or maybe it is a sentiment or belief we want them to subscribe to.?

Let’s break down 3 different things that happen to ideas that never launch the way we expect them to:

It may look like these are 3 completely different things, but they are more like strands woven in a braid than each a separate individual strand.

Idea contagion happens to me often.?

I start out thinking of an idea with a specific destination or target in mind, but that one idea becomes infected by other ideas until the group of ideas can no longer be easily separated.?

Two things are important to note:

1. Idea contagion itself is neither positive nor negative, but the downstream effects of it happening can be.
2. Most of the time, Idea contagion is accidental, but it can also be cultivated, planned, and implemented with varying degrees of success.

We have all experienced the impact of an idea we were fond of being tainted and also the thrill of an idea that we knew about first becoming infected with popularity.

Idea contagion is a distant cousin to idea corruption.?

Sometimes an idea is so encumbered by all the stories of what it is (and not necessarily what it actually is) it becomes completely corrupted.?

This can happen to the same thing multiple times with the corruption shooting around in all directions.?

For example:?

The Idea: Learning Styles

Idea Corruption #1: If someone has a particular learning style, then any information presented to them in a way that uses that learning style will be the most effective way they could learn it. [Even if the instructional design is bad and the content insipid because… Learning Styles are magic!!!!]?

Idea Corruption #2: Learning styles don’t exist. They are debunked and ridiculous. No one learns in a particular style more than any other. Everyone can learn the same from the same content in the same way. [Especially if I create this course in a way that I like to learn, because clearly, that is the way everyone learns… because Learning Styles are trash, but my thinking is magic!!!!]?

Sometimes we experience idea interruption.

This is often how we “lose the thought,” or maybe it is only delayed…

When this happens to me, like the dogs in the Disney movie Up; suddenly, my brain is filled with the loud trumpet of “Squirrel” drowning out all previous thoughts.?(If you don’t know what I am talking about, I am sorry to tell you, you are likely an owner of a brain that is not equipped with the squirrel-monitoring superpower of ADHD.)

Can ideas be delayed by interrupting?

Have you ever had someone say something to you like “hot dog” and no matter what you were thinking previously, immediately after hearing it, all you can picture or think about is a hot dog??

This subliminal prompt works very well with advertising and product placement, but I wonder if the same kind of insertion of other people's ideas, interrupts the flow of our own, and do we ever get back to where we were going with our own ideation? What about in social learning situations?

How does this show up in Learning??

We used to believe that we couldn’t let a learner go too far with the “wrong idea” or they would get stuck believing something that wasn’t true. The research is clear that a learner correcting an incorrect idea is a more effective way to learn and retain the correct information.?

But what if we are building our programs not around using that approach as a strategy, but rather, in ways that don’t foster self-correction and instead foster more opportunities for inserting idea interruptions into the process of learning??

Could this wind up creating fixed mindsets, leaving our people more stuck in misunderstanding or misinformation???

We would not be helping them to illuminate false information, evolve their thinking and enlighten themselves with new correct information.

Being at the Leadership Alliance sessions of Learning Solutions 2023 provided this rich backdrop of how the field of learning is so much more a patchwork quilt than it is a strategic minefield.?Strange analogy, I know.?

When we think about terms like:

learning, training, instructional design, process, metrics, measurements, creativity, reading, testing, digital innovation, digital transformation, learning ecosystem, talent, diversity, equity, inclusion, and belonging,

there are so many things that come to mind for each of us, and depending on our role, focus, learning products utilized, and organizational thrust,

we will each be holding onto a different part of the metaphorical learning elephant for each one of these ideas, or we may not even touch it at all.

The role of the person who answers the question informs their view, but too many of the same view can limit everyone’s understanding.?

For many years in our industry, there was a focus on having “like learning leaders” together in the room, as though someone who only does in-person training would have nothing in common with someone who only builds the learning operational processes.?

That might be true if it was a session for using a particular software to build e-learning courses or a particular software platform hosting virtual instructor-led training, but...

I believe that the cross-pollination of ideas, making connections in the ways in which we do things, driving philosophies and methodologies, is so much more helpful than making all of our professional development be about the acquisition of skills.?

Personally, I might learn better in other ways, but when I am with other learning leaders who think differently than I do, and who have different tools and mandates at their disposal/on demand, I am driven to think with my head in different boxes.?

I am driven to try on all the different hats of my interesting new learning leader friends and see what would be useful in my world.?

I have spoken recently to many classroom teachers who are trying to break into instructional design. They have gotten a message (which I think is often nonsense) that there is a thick, almost impenetrable wall between the two activities.

Having done so many jobs in learning throughout my decades-long career, everything from teaching kindergarten to college, corporate learning, instructional design, e-learning development, LMS development, design, implementation & customization, stand-up comedy, theatre, virtual/in-person instruction, learning product design, learning product and technology sales, consulting and probably a whole host of other things that I cannot even remember right now, there is a time for specialization, and there is a time for improvisation, there is a time for evolution, and there is a time for evangelism.

When I think about how we will revolutionize learning, I go back to my own Learning Manifesto . The key pieces for me are:

Learning should never be a waste of their time.

I care if Learning changes them in ways that help them grow.?

I care if we can measure their growth.

I care that they feel seen, valued, inspired, appreciated, supported, nurtured and empowered to succeed by the learning opportunities we provide, curate, offer or require.

We need the right tool for the job where and when our people need them.?

Learning is how we will grow our people, our teams and the future of the organization.?

Learning is how we get from here to there.

?It might be revolutionary, or it might just be a good idea.

#learning #instructionaldesign #leadershipdevelopment #teachers #TheLearningManifesto #ideas #growth #TheLearningGuild #lscon