The Right Questions to Ask
Dave Ferguson’s blog led me to an interesting debate in the academic community. The key question seems to be which is more important for students in the 21st century - facts or skills. Some people believe that the common core of facts all students should have is the most important function of education. Others believe that key skills like information literacy, media literacy, creativity and problem solving are necessary corollaries.
Personally, I have always believed that skills are key. When it comes to the sort of programs I’ve developed over my career, I believe you shouldn’t call it training unless participants walk away able to DO something they couldn’t do before. And by DO something, I don’t mean make a list or answer a multiple choice correctly.
A lot of the e-learning in the world is teaching, not training. And teaching is important, too, of course. But in a business context, it’s often what people do, not what they know, that drives business results.
So why bring this up during our curriculum-design month? (aside from the fact that I found Dave’s blog post in my facebook stream today and it intrigued me?) Because developing skills - in addition to knowledge- on a topic requires different information from your SMEs. Steven Downes explains the difference between knowing facts about something and being able to do something with this example:
If our knowledge of how to drive depended on a set of facts, then at a certain point it would become impossible, because while we could teach people how to drive on common streets and in common situations, as we drive further and further away from home, in newer and different vehicles, our knowledge becomes less relevant, until eventually we are simply unable to drive. If, instead of focusing on the ‘facts’ of driving, we think of driving as an activity or skill, then we are able to adapt, and develop new abilities, and new knowledge, mastering the ability to drive in strange places as we progress.
When you are trying to mirror the real-world performance you want your learners to demonstrate on the job, you need different information from your SMEs. Instead of giving them MadLibs about what learners need to know, you ask them about what people need to do and the context in which they do it. For example:
- Who will learners interact with to perform successfully?
- Where will learners get information to support their performance? (e.g. a performance support website? A supervisor or other internal resource?)
- What does good performance looks like, and how can we represent it on a computer screen?
- What common mistakes do people make, and what do those look like?
- What happens when people make these common mistakes?
It can be more difficult to gather this information than to put together a list of facts that SMEs consider relevant to theoretical knowledge of the topic at hand. (Shameless Plug: Check out our posts next month on Defining and Analyzing Performance for more tips on how to figure out the sorts of information you’ll need to create these sorts of courses.)
The benefit to this approach is resulting courses that look and feel more like what learners actually experience on the job. Check out these samples to see what I mean. http://www.bottomlineperformance.com/samples/learningActivities/MultiMeter.html
http://www.bottomlineperformance.com/samples/video/03_02_01.html
Tags: Content Gathering, design, Discovery based Learning, education, Skills
October 1st, 2009 at 6:03 am
Lisa, I’m glad you found value in my post. I want to stress that all I did was summarize (for myself) what I thought Stephen Downes was saying in his.
That connects to your larger point, I think. I was fortunate enough to learn elements of instructional design from Joe Harless (who coined the term “front-end analysis”). He repeatedly said that the worst question you could ask your client is, “What do you want people to know?”
Why? Because they’ll tell you. And usually, they’ll want people to know history of widgets, and appreciation of widgets, and great moments in widgets, and widget gurus of the past.
Instead, Joe said, the key question is, “What do you want people to do?”
An additional advantage of this approach (besides the many you cite) is that, at least with some experts, it helps them shift focus from the specific steps (factual, procedural) to the desired result. That means, I believe, that you can then work backwards from the result to uncover not only skill and knowledge that matters, but other kinds of influence on performance: standards, feedback systems, job design, tools, and so on.
Another advantage: you’re less likely to have a Jeopardy game in the final product.
October 11th, 2009 at 9:29 am
Dave,
I think it can be okay to ask thr question, “what do people NEED to known” if it is asked in the right context. If you start with, “What do people need to be able to do?” And then work backward to ” In order to be able to do X, whay do people have to know?” You can start to tease out important content.
I agree with both you and Lisa that asking the “know” question too early or in the wrong context is deadly to creating a meaningful learning experience.