Advice on choosing typefaces

A few months ago I created a presentation on graphic design tips for non-designers. Happily, as a result I've gotten some fantastic questions from people who have gone through the presentation materials and want to know even more.

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As anyone who has seen/read my presentation (or, let's be honest, just spoken to me for more than 5 minutes) knows, I have some pretty strong feelings about the usual default typefaces Arial and Times New Roman. To summarize: they are undeniably boring. As a result of this stance, I was recently asked about how to pick new default typefaces (in particular, "fancy" typefaces, but I'll cover that part of the question in a second post). While I didn't recommend any specific typefaces in particular, I did share a few basic tips for deciding on just the right typeface.

In short, what you have to figure out first is whether you're looking to use the typeface that come pre-installed on your computer or instead want to pick up some new typeface options.

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Using what you've got

Assuming you're going with what your computer came with, it's important to know that not all computers/software have the same library of preinstalled typefaces, in particular Mac vs Windows. Here's a handy list of what typefaces are available on what operating systems/software.

If you create a document with one typeface and then move it to a computer that doesn't have that typeface installed, then the new computer will try and substitute a typeface it DOES have, which leads to all sorts of wacky and/or ugly messing with your layout. This is one of the key reasons people use Arial and Times New Roman so much: they may be boring, but every computer has them.

My slide, exactly as designed, viewed on my lousy Windows work computer

And the same slide viewed on my Mac at home. Kinda the same, kinda not so much.

So, when you're choosing what typeface(s) to use, try one of the following: 

• make sure you know what operating system people will be viewing your project on and design for that system's typeface libraries 
• or publish the file as an image or PDF (these file formats don't depend on the viewing computer's typeface library)

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Using something new

So you've decided to go with a typeface that doesn't come preinstalled. But don't forget: the more you go custom, the more work you have to do.

To begin with, you need to find (and possibly pay for) your fancy new typefaces. But where to look?

If you've got any sort of budget, My Fonts is a good place to start. It has a great selection, you can browse their typefaces in a number of ways (including by typographic style!), and most of what they have is at a reasonable price. Other similar option to check out is Veer .

If your budget is next to nothing, don't worry. You've still got options. Check out Font Squirrel for a large collection of free (yet still attractive) typefaces. Also, typeface designers sometimes release a few of their creations for free as a promotion. Keep your eyes out for those as well (I've been collecting every one I can find in my free design assets Pinterest board). If you choose a free option, always be careful to read the licensing requirements. Some typefaces are free, but with a limited license for use. Someone's giving you a typeface for free... the least you can do is use it the way they asked you to.

Anyway, once you choose your shiny new typeface, you then need to install it on your computer. It's pretty easy. Here's the instructions for Windows and OSX. 

Also, don't forget, the rules for displaying new typefaces are the sames as pre-installed ones: unless you're sharing your file as a PDF or image, you'll need to install the typeface on any computer you want it to display on.

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But how to pick which specific typeface to use?

If you're an expert there's a ton of information out there about the design philosophies you can use to sort through the world of typefaces and find what you need. If you're just a beginner, though, you can probably get away with just looking at the examples of good typeface choices all around you, flipping through your options, and then picking something that you feel works with the mood you're trying to create. Just remember to always do the following:

• Go with a sans-serif or serif typeface if you're using it for a large amount of text.
• Make sure the typeface is readable at the size you need to make it.
• Really examine if the mood the typeface creates matches to mood of your project.

Review: Cognitive Surplus

It's book report time again!

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Title: Cognitive Surplus: How Technology Makes Consumers Into Collaborators
Author: Clay Shirky

What's it about?

Did you read Shirky's first book Here Comes Everybody? This book is basically its unofficial sequel. While HCE discussed how technology is enabling people to create organizations and movements via social media, this book focuses instead on the power that this same technology gives the average person to both be a media creator (rather than just consumer) as well collaborate in new ways with others.

What's so great about it?

Shirky claims, rightly so in my opinion, that we're in a media revolution of the same magnitude as the invention of the moveable type printing press. The internet, smart phones, computers, social media, and the like have all lowered the bar for creating and distributing content. In addition, they've also made it exceptionally easy for people to collaborate regardless of location, occupation, or traditional hierarchies.

He spends this book outlining how these lowered barriers for content creation combined with increased ability to collaborate is allowing us all to pool our combined knowledge and build on it in ways that would have been previously impossible. He also breaks down the "hows, whys, and whats behind cognitive surplus" and walks through the wide variety of content it's created, from things as inconsequential (but fun) as memes to accomplishments as important as civic movements.

What's going to drive me nuts about it?

The organization of the book content is incredibly tight through most of it. The tail end of the book, though, reads like it was just a collection of the leftover snippets of info that didn't fit neatly into the previous chapters but were too interesting to leave out. It's not bad content, but the randomness of it compared to the tidy order of the rest of the book is a bit jarring.

Anything else?

Do you already participate in Twitter chats, edit Wikipedia, record your own YouTube videos, collaborate via Google Hangouts, or have an online personal learning network?  Chances are you already know the basics that Shirky is covering here. It's still worth reading this book though, if just to give you successful examples to share with others.

In addition, while this book is an enjoyable read for experts, it's also quite accessible to people who don't know much about online collaboration as well. That's a huge plus as far as I'm concerned.

I'm too lazy to Google the book. Where can I buy it?

*sigh* Here you go:

• Canada
• US
• UK

PAX East 2013 - Gaming & Education

March was a busy month for me convention-wise. I got home from Learning Solutions and then a handful of days later I was back on a plane heading out to Boston for PAX East. For the non-gamers in the audience, PAX East is a 3-day convention devoted to all things gaming, from console and PC videogames to board games. For me, this trip was mostly just for fun, but there was a professional connection as well: PAX tends to have sessions on gaming and education. I managed to fit two in my schedule and thought both were worth sharing.

Also, thanks to one of the con attendees who sat near me at both sessions (@lordsillion) you can watch footage of both of them. Bonus points if you can find me in each video.

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In which I sidetrack to rant about how gaming & education is discussed at conferences

Before I start on the actual content of the sessions I saw, I just needed to get a bit of ranting out of my system.

I've got one foot firmly in the world of education and training, the other in gaming. Alas, at both learning and gaming conferences this doesn't appear to be commonplace. Conference sessions on gaming and education, as a result, tend to be in one of the following two frustratingly basic flavours:

Learning Conference:
"You wouldn't believe it, but those games your kids waste their time with and that you use to kill time while waiting in line CAN ALSO be used for learning too! Fancy that!"

Gaming Conference:
"OMG! There are totally people using games to help people learn stuff. Let's now talk for an hour about games only meant for elementary school students."

I am so tired of seeing yet another session where the content is all for newbies. So why do I keep attending these things? Because once in a blue moon one of these sessions actually bothers to go beyond the very basics.

Alas, this was not one of those times. So if you already have a sense of how gaming and education fit together, I'm not going to have anything new to tell you here. Feel free to run away... or, better yet, tell me about some conventions that consistently talk about gaming & training at a more advanced level that I can show up at. For those of you not thoroughly entrenched in both worlds, though, you might enjoy this writeup of the PAX East sessions.

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Session: Saving Education With Game Design

Speaker: Steve Swink

Video: Click here

Apparently the original speaker for this session got tripped up at the Canada/USA border, so this guy, an independent game developer who has created multiple educational games, was brought in to cover for the session. Thankfully, it was a decent substitution as I wouldn't have guessed he was a last minute replacement if he hadn't mentioned it himself.

His session started started off like so...

I know, not my best photo.

Point 1 was frustrating as I felt Swink used it as an opportunity to paint all education with the same lousy, unnuanced brush. He constantly tried to make the point that schooling is all recall and regurgitation of information, which I'd absolutely disagree with. Based on some of the stuff he mentioned, it's clear HIS experience with school wasn't great, but he made way too much of a jump in assuming his experience is everyone's. So yeah, he irritated me a bit here.

He did win me back, though, when he started talking about the power that immersive simulations have in teaching people how to interact with real situations and understand how smaller actions can chain together to have larger effects. His example was the game Civilization, a sim that manages to encapsulate the basics of how civilizations grow and decline all within highly amusing gameplay. What do you think teaches the general concepts of civilization building better: reading about how it's done or actually doing it yourself? My money is on the latter every time.

So Swink has, as a result of this thinking, been working on creating games that use the power of simulations to help kids learn two real-world skills: persuasive writing and critical thinking. These games include:

• The Doctor's Cure: Users play as an investigative reporter trying to solve several town mysteries. They talk to townspeople, collect evidence, and then write news articles based on their research.
• The Mystery of Taiga River: A park is experiencing a rapid decline in their fish population and it's up to your friendly neighbourhood water quality scientist (the user) to find out why. Players work to examine water quality, analyze evidence for what local groups may be contributing to the problem, and come up with a hypothesis for why the fish are dying and how it can be stopped.

"All your fish are dead"? You monster!

There are some core factors in both games that help them work as effective learning tools:

• They immerse players in a realistic scenario where the skills they're being asked to practice would actually be used. Players can see that they're not learning content for the sake of learning; it actually connects to the real world. 
• They also create a safe place to practice and experiment using their skills. People can learn both through successes AND errors. 
• Player choices have consequences, most of which aren't obvious. This helps players feel the choices their actions in the game are meaningful. 
• The games aren't stand alone pieces. They are tied in to the rest of the school curriculum.

Did these games actually work? An initial test with at-risk students in Arizona indicates yes. While playing The Doctor's Curse, these students wrote more than they ever had in the past and at a noticeably higher skill level than they had prior to playing.

So, to summarize, sims can be a useful way to help prepare learners to interact with complex systems and experiment with the content they're learning in a safe place that provides useful feedback.

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Session: Gamification and Learning: Does Anyone Need Some "Stinking" Badges

Speakers: Sam Abramovich [Researcher, University of Pittsburgh], Peter Wardrip [Researcher, University of Pittsburgh], Yoon Jeon Kim [Researcher, Florida State University], Ross Higashi [Roboticist, National Robotics Engineering Center], Meghan Bathgate [Researcher, University of Pittsburgh]

Video: Click Here

So yeah, a session entirely on badges as gamification... a contentious issue these days. Honestly, I felt like the panel did a good job of explaining not just what badges are, but what makes a badge worthwhile and what makes it a waste of time.

Can badges really be this helpful? Yes, if you use them in ways that aren't idiotic.

Is a badge something these speakers thought would magically make people do tasks they were otherwise disinterested in? Not a chance. And if this is the view people have of badges, then it's no wonder people have been dissatisfied with them.

What badges are great for, they stressed, is this:

• Providing a means of showing you accomplished a task/skill: This is much like how badges in Scouts/Guides work. The badge itself is a way of noting your achievement and showing it to others, much like a certificate or degree. It could also be used as an alternative to traditional assessments.
• Showing others what you're interested in: The specific collection of badges a Scout/Guide might have varies from person to person. That's because kids get to pick from a large number badges that are possible to achieve. By choosing what badges to try and earn (and which to put off or even ignore completely) they curate data about what they're interested in. Game achievements/trophies function in a similar way. Looking at, for instance, my personal set of PS3 achievements may not encapsulate everything about me as a person, but you sure can infer a heck of a lot about who I am as a gamer from it.
• Seeing connections for how one skill leads to another: For badge systems that have badge prerequisites, a map of the progression from one badge to others (how you can "level up") can help people understand how learning one skill leads to learning others and assist them in planning long-term goals.

Oh look! None of these point suggest that badges in and of themselves are a major motivator. They also didn't suggest that that badges themselves are the way you teach information. They instead claim that badges are better at creating a portfolio of your skills/accomplishments, can be used to establish your identity to others, and help you understand how one skill can connect to others. As one of the panelists said, "Badges are not the learning themselves. They're an identification that learning has taken place."

Here's what I feel is the big gap between how badges are often used and what research suggests they're actually good for. So many of the instances that we see of lousy gamification these days involve using badges to try and motivate people to do actions they otherwise wouldn't bother with. That might work for the occasional person who's a bit completion-obsessed, but most people just can't be asked to care about badges that don't mean anything to them. And that's what makes these types of projects fail. Gamification projects (or at the very least badges) then unfortunately get unfairly pegged as a failure rather acknowledging the real problem: that gamification was used incorrectly.

So, going back to the session, the panel speakers said that you need to ask yourself the following questions when you want to use badges effectively:

• What kind of badges will your users actually care about?
• Who ARE your end users anyway?
• What situations and settings will these badges be used in?
• What ecosystem will your badges exist in?
• What set of standards will you build into your badge system?
• How can you make sure your badges are recognized for what they are by others?

That last question is the one that has broader implications for badges if, as the speakers suggest we should, we use badges as a type of portfolio of skills. If your badges follow you from school to school and/or job to job like a transcript or series of job reviews, then there needs to be some understood standard for what they mean. For instance, because of the standards in Scouts/Guides, a merit badge in Archery earned by a kid in Orlando, Florida is still recognized if that kid moves to Las Vegas, Nevada. The badge has a standard series of requirements to earn it and those standards are universally recognized (well, at least universally recognized within a particular group).

That's where I suppose broad adoption of badges might fail. While I'm actually quite attached to the idea of badges as a portfolio of your accomplishments and skills, I suspect that wrangling a single system for all schools and employers to acknowledge and grant badges where the value of each badge represents consistent achievements/skills (and is consistently recognized) is nigh impossible. Could a school system, single employer, or university pull it off to make internal transfers and class/career planning easier though? I'd say absolutely yes. In fact, if you watch the video of the session you can hear the speakers talk repeatedly about a LEGO program that did just that.

More so than any other point, in the end the most repeated theme from this session was that we can't expect badges to do the heavy lifting of motivating people to learn or do things. They're much better used to chronicle, curate, and connect instead.

Learning Solutions 2013 - Final Thoughts

Okay, so this post is LONG delayed. Would you believe I'm still sick with the sinus infection I caught at Learning Solutions? If I was a D&D character, clearly Constitution would have been my dump stat.

What? Not everyone skimps out on Charisma.

This means I have a huge backlog of things to blog about (including a whole other convention), but have only just gotten the energy back to actually accomplish writing anything. In the interests of keeping things chronological, I'm starting here and working my way forward.

So, without further ado, here are a few final thoughts about my Learning Solutions 2013 experience.

Learning Solutions vs DevLearn?

I think most people know much I adore DevLearn. It really is one of my favourite events of the year. No, not favourite professional event. I mean just plain event (other contenders, in case you're curious, are PAX and the Toronto Comic Arts Festival). I love it that much.

So how does Learning Solutions measure up in comparison? Well, both hold very true to what I'm seeing as typical for eLearning Guild events: practical, unpretentious information shared in a casual and welcoming environment. I have a strong preference for this type of event, so I'm glad to see that the experience is universal between both conferences.

As far as content goes, I found that Learning Solutions leans a bit more towards the needs of learning professionals who create strategy and write content (in particular, the expo room). If you do more actual development though, DevLearn is the better place to be. That said, it's not like if you're an instructional designer who does development and you can only make it to Learning Solutions that you'll have a lack of content that applies to your work. The sessions will still be incredibly relevant. You'll probably just be less interested in the expo room.

Likely due to the location and time of year, Learning Solutions seems to attract a somewhat different batch of attendees than DevLearn, but I'd say both groups are equally worth getting to know. In terms of insight, friendliness, interest in our industry, and commitment to doing the right thing for our learners, the average attendee of both conferences is pretty much equally fantastic.

Is it worth going to both Learning Solutions AND DevLearn in the same year?

Yes.

There didn't appear to be any repeated presentations and I didn't leave Learning Solutions feeling it was just the same information I'd seen months earlier at DevLearn.

If I can make it work financially my intention is absolutely to attend both in the future.

So how was the backchannel?

Lively, as always. It felt slightly less busy than the backchannel at DevLearn, but the quality of what was there was definitely high. Once again I found it a fantastic way to share information, meet new people, and have insightful conversations. I also got a chance to finally meet several people I follow on Twitter in person for the first time, and they were all delightful.

And how did live tweeting and blogging the event go?

Thanks to wanting to let my coworkers attend the conference remotely, I once again tweeted and blogged like crazy... and once again was the top hashtag contributor... by a lot. What can I say? It turns out I really enjoy doing this.

Back at DevLearn last year, I had a great chat with another attendee about whether live tweeting can get in the way of actually experiencing and enjoying the conference material yourself. I'd agree that it takes a negative toll on how much information you take in in the moment, but the opportunity cost varies drastically from person to person. For me, while I was getting slightly less at the time from any session I live tweeted, I more than made up for it by reviewing my tweets later as I composed my blog postings. Will everyone else have this same experience? I doubt it. Is there anything wrong with that? Not at all.

The only thing I can recommend to anyone considering conference live tweeting and blogging is to try it out. If it's getting in the way of you actually getting the most out of the conference, then feel free to scale back or abandon it completely.

As for me, the benefits outweigh the drawbacks, so I'm going to keep up with it at future conferences.

You live tweeted the whole conference... but don't you have tendonitis?

That is correct. Thanks to way too much typing directly on touch screens at DevLearn and a deeply unfortunate millinery class last fall, I'm currently recovering from a nasty bout of tendonitis (yup. I wasn't kidding about the lousy constitution).You know what helps (I mean, other than tons of physical therapy)? Not frantically typing directly on my iPad screen.

Because I didn't want to backslide on my recovery, I picked up this Logitech Ultrathin Keyboard cover for my iPad and I couldn't have been happier with it. Seriously, if you want a more comfortable way to type on your iPad for long periods of time, this is a great solutions. It's lightweight, comfortable, and not half bad to look at to boot.

It's not cheap, but it IS cheaper than more physical therapy appointments.

How was presenting at a conference for the first time?

I'm hesitant to write a long post about the experience until I get my audience feedback later this month. Until then I can definitely say that the experience managed to be both terrifying and invigorating at the exact same time. Nervousness aside, I'd absolutely do it again.

I'd also recommend Learning Solutions as a good conference for a first time presenter as it seems to have friendly audiences that ask good questions. Always a plus.

As a side note, speaking at Learning Solutions and sharing my session materials has netted me multiple opportunities to give my presentation to other groups within my company as well as what appears to be a regular speaking gig with another team on ID trends and technology. So one conference speech can definitely roll into some unexpected career perks afterwards.

That's all super positive. Was there anything you didn't like?

The weather was lousy. The bathroom in my hotel room was completely lame. The 15 minute breaks on the last day of the conference were way too short. That's pretty much it though.

Any final thoughts?

I just want to give one last shout out to all the fantastic people who took the time to chat with me (either in person or via Twitter). Thanks for making a shy extrovert feel welcome. Also, bonus thanks go out to anyone who came by my presentation. You were a fun audience and I hope you enjoyed what I had to share.

Learning Solutions 2013 - Day Three

Okay, the final day of the conference! This was the most brutal day for me not just because I was exhausted from the rest of the conference, but also because the breaks between each session were a tiny 15 minutes long.  Not ideal for a day where I needed to check out of my room and store my luggage between sessions. Sure, I could have skipped a session to fit in, oh, say an actual breakfast, but where’s the fun in that?

Session: Morning Buzz: Today's Challenges in Instructional Design

Speaker: Heather Porterfield

Once again, I didn't try and live tweet the Morning Buzz. These sessions seem to be more casual chats than lead sessions, so it made more sense to me to participate in the discussion in the room rather than observe and tweet. It went well for the two MB sessions I attended at Learning Solutions 2013, so I think it'll be my plan for any future conferences as well.

Anyway, this particular Morning Buzz was an opportunity for us to share some of the current challenges we're experiencing as instructional designers. What I got out of this session more than anything else was a reminder of both how differently most companies define what exactly "ID work" is and also the wide variety of paths people take to becoming an ID in the first place. Where I work there is a huge variety from person to person in what we each do in our roles as IDs and how exactly we got here, but that mixture is just the tip of the iceberg compared to the diversity of IDs in this session.

While I don't think we found a lot of solutions in this session, I suspect because of just how wildly different what we each do in our roles is, it was worthwhile getting up so early if just to continue to broaden my understanding of what IDs everywhere do in their role.

Session: What Stakeholders Need to Know: Communicating the Results of Training Evaluations

Speaker: Frank Morris

Is there anything more fascinating than seeing a co-worker in a completely different role? Like, perhaps, seeing them facilitate a session? Definitely not.

As you’ve probably guessed, Morris and I work together and, while I knew he also facilitates classes, I’d never seen him in action before. So this session wasn’t just an opportunity for me to learn some new content; it was an opportunity to see my co-worker in a new light (and see him do a fabulous job at facilitating if I do say so myself).

So, work team pride aside, this session’s theme was how IDs/Project Managers/Training Team Leads can strategically communicate the results of training with stakeholders and business partners. Honestly though, the advice was broad enough that it could be applied to any time a learning professional needs to talk effectively with those groups.

The gist of the session isn’t that complicated: good communication matters. As well, what counts as “good communication” isn’t going to be the same for every audience. What we need to do to effectively communicate is put ourselves in the shoes of the stakeholder and figure out what exactly they actually care about (here’s his slide on some typical stakeholder categories). For instance, an update about how your new training program aligns with broad company policy may not be that fascinating to a line manager, but it sure appeals to an executive in charge of that policy. Admit that a one-size-fits-all approach to your communications isn’t going to work and instead tailor your messages specifically for each audience.

Morris discussed some generally useful trend metrics to have on hand, for instance: trends over time; against standards, expectations, or targets; and compared to self or others. Quality and efficacy of the work you do can also be helpful metrics for your stakeholders. One metric that isn’t as helpful as business partners would like it to be, though, is ROI. Because ROI is tricky to quantify for learning, moving stakeholders to framing results in terms of Return on Expectations is a better, more measurable option.

Finally, Morris recommended taking the time up front to create a communication strategy for all your different stakeholders that quickly outlines how they want to be communicated with, when you should contact them, and what they’ll want to know. While it takes a bit of time, this type of strategy can easily be reused for future projects.

Session: OMG!—I Got a Budget for a Multimedia Studio: A How-to on Building It

Speakers: Mark Jenkins and David Dichmann

They had me at “OMG.” *laugh*

This session was a set of two approachable and funny experts who just walked us through some of their recommendations for purchasing equipment that’s good bang for your buck as well as tips for setting it up so it works effectively. The presentation, as fun as it was, was a lot of bullet point recommendations, so I’ll just list some of the highlights of what Jenkins and Dichmann mentioned:

• Some cheap/free media software resources the speakers use: Solidworks viewer, Adobe Premier Pro, Camtasia Studio, and SnagIt
• Their best practices for video are good best practices for everything: simplify, simplify, simplify
• Two hardware recommendations for screen captures: Epiphan VGA2USB (external frame grabber capture device that captures output from any VGA source) and DVI2PCIe (PCIe capture card internal lossless frame grabber with a single-link DVI/VGA input).
• For lights, Alzo Video’s fluorescent lights were a suggestion for new lighting, and GE Tungsten bulbs were recommended for replacing the lights in existing room fixtures.
• If you’re choosing a single camera that has to shoot both video and stills, pick based on which of those two types you’ll be doing most often. Shooting mostly stills with the occasional video? Choose a DSLR. Doing mostly video with the occasional stills? Go for an actual video camera.
• Green screen footage can be greatly improved with a few quick tips: keep the screen at least 5-7 feet behind the subject (to avoid green reflections on their back), keep the subject’s shadow off of the screen, and hairlight the back of the subject to make crisp edges for post-production.
• Microphone recs: Shuie SM 58 or 57. XR-2 USB. H1 Zoom (fragile but flexible)

They finished with three key points: know your audience, fit your choices for the purpose, and having a budget does not equal having unlimited cash

Session: Keynote: Leading a High-Performance Life

Speaker: Yvonne Camus

The final session of the conference was a keynote by Camus about her experience as a competitor in the Eco-Challenge race and how what she learned from that competition relates to general advice about increasing and renewing your enthusiasm for what you do.

Camus began simply with this thought: enthusiasm is a renewable resource. It doesn’t magically replenish itself though. We need to do things to keep it fueled, such as

• Explore what you’re capable of when you’re doing something at your best.
• Concentrate and pay attention to the moments where you were brilliant, and then consider what you did that contributed to your high performance.
• On hard days, just give yourself credit for showing up.
• Work smart, not hard.
• Surround yourself with incredible people.
• Energy follows thought, so plan to be excellent.

Overall it felt like Camus’ story about her involvement in the Eco-Challenge was a good scaffold for talking about managing to push through adversity and continuing to raise your own bar. Each point she made was illustrated with vivid examples from the race that managed to feel both on point and genuine. I never got the sense that she was trying to force a story to fit a point or force a point in order to fit in a story.

I tend to find that the final keynotes at conferences skew towards the inspirational rather than the task-specific, but that tone change is likely a smart move. Most attendees end up leaving the conference feeling energized overall (and people who don’t love this sort of talk can consistently know to scamper off early).

And so…

That was Learning Solutions 2013. I’m planning a wrap-up post later on, but for now I’ll just sum things up by saying it was an enjoyable three days and well worth the trip.

Learning Solutions 2013 - Day Two

Okay, it's time for the Thursday Learning Solutions session roundup, now with 100% more "me leading my first concurrent session."

Session: Keynote -  Hotbed: The Blueprint of High Performance
Speaker: Daniel Coyle

Just what I like: a keynote speaker that's entertaining but also relevant to the conference topics. Nothing against Ballard, but Coyle's talk felt like it had a lot more to do with what I'll actually be able to use on the job.

The question at the center of his talk was simple: what exactly makes people improve their performance drastically? The common story we're used to hearing is that some people are just talented, but real life data challenges that assumption. As it turns out, there are actually habits and patterns that lead to talent.

The core of improvement is 10,000 hours of practice: the "magic formula" to mastery. If you've ever read Malcolm Gladwell's Outliers then you're familiar with how this works. If you haven't, though, it's pretty simple - practicing an awful lot leads to an awful lot of improvement. Now, Coyle didn't mention this, but this practice does need to be high quality. If you practice caterwauling off-key in your shower for 10,000 hours without any guidance on how to improve, all you've mastered is caterwauling off-key.

Also important is pushing a learner to struggle. In that point where we're stretching ourselves to do just a bit more, that is the sweet spot for building skills. But, you need to have a balance of challenge. Too easy and learners become bored. Too hard and they become overwhelmed and frustrated.

While Coyle had a number of additional bits of advice, one really stuck with me: "Fill your windshield." What he meant by this is that you should make sure you have a large number of role models in your life to show you what you can become and challenge you to even surpass their achievements.

Session: Designing for Clarity - Graphic Design Tips for Non-Graphic Designers
Speaker: Bianca Woods

Oh look, it's me!

Yes, I presented at Learning Solutions this year. Actually, it was my first time ever presenting at a conference. I'm sure I'll write more about the experience later on, but suffice it to say I survived... and even enjoyed it.

Rather than recap my own session for you, guess what... you can actually download my deck; read through my speaker notes; and find links to all the books, sites, and documents I referenced by simply clicking this link.

Enjoy and let me know if you have any questions/comments!

Session: Learning On Demand—the Evolution of Technology and the Future of Learning
Speaker: Reuben Tozman

Have you ever seen a room full of people try to organize themselves into a number of groups all at the same time, all the while trying to reconcile the fact that they themselves actually belong to multiple groups and aren't sure how they should show that (no, as it turns out people don't naturally sort themselves into Venn diagrams *laugh*)? I have, and it was hilarious.

So, amusingness aside, this was the intro to Tozman's talk, and he used this experience as part of a larger activity to show just how tiny and often useless the information that most LMSes hold about the learners and courses they interact with is. He also discussed other distinct LMS limitations.  For instance, they essentially just repackage the traditional classroom experience in a digital format. They don't create customized courses for individuals based on their actual needs. The true/false and multiple choice assessments typically used within an LMS don't actually assess how well a learner can actually perform a skill.

Clearly, the traditional LMS model is broken, but where should we look to for better models of how to use technology to teach? Tozman suggests the web. The way we've built the web shows some amazing best practices for using technology to better reach our students. For instance, here are a few snippets from this session:

• The web doesn't have the strict hierarchy of the learner/teacher relationship. It levels the playing field.
• Loads of people contribute to the web with no financial reward for doing so. This creates a wealth of information.
• The web needs to "understand what you're feeding it", so we've built more effective systems for helping it do this.
• Going viral can actually add to the value of the content.

However, there are some core issues about the web that would also apply to a web-inspired learning system. Learners would have to be willing to share more details about themselves in order for the system to know how best to help them (the difficult balance of privacy vs. openness, a question that does't have an easy answer for all people). Also, the system would need to be a network, so that if one portion went down the content you're trying to share in it could still be accessed. The information itself would need to be networked in a sensible way, so that learners could find and follow connections themselves. As well, since current lessons aren't packaged in a way that makes all the content in them searchable, we'd need to port over any relevant legacy information from lessons built for LMSes.

I enjoyed this session immensely, partially because I've already bought in to how amazing the web is as a tool for learning (and, conversely, how limited our LMSes are in comparison). The talk apparently also ties in nicely Tozman's book, Learning On Demand: How the Evolution of the Web is Shaping the Future of Learning, which I haven't read myself but was recommended to me this week by enough people I respect that I'm absolutely going to be picking it up when I get back home.

Session: Storyline and the iPad: A Case Study
Speakers: Desirée Pinder and Rick Smith

This was part case study of creating training for a mobile group of employees, part explanation of some of the technical hurdles the development team had to overcome in order to develop learning in Articulate Storyline that would function on both iPads and PCs.

On one hand, it was great to hear someone talk about some of the ways Storyline requires a bit of unexpected fussing with (and a few bootleg solutions) in order to make your output function equally well on iPads as well as in browsers on a PC. Even the best software is going to have trouble pulling that off, so I appreciated seeing someone both acknowledge those challenges and show specific instances of how they solved them (key takeaway: don't assume what you create is going to work exactly as planned. Test early, test often!). I also appreciated how open the speaker was about admitting when something didn't initially go right. Her honesty about how the design process rarely runs smoothly was refreshing.

Oh the other hand, this session jumped between a very dry case study (they did an excellent job of outlining what the training requirements were and how they decided to address them, but the explanation had little "story" to it. It was just a series of facts.) and a tech demo of how to finagle Storyline to function in the way they needed it to (only, without a lot of order to the way the information was presented). I would have rather that they picked one or the other and focused on making it a stronger version of that type of presentation. Tell me a compelling story of a mobile team of employees looking for a flexible solution that would meet their technical needs... or choose instead to run a session billed as "Tips and tricks for designing lessons in Storyline that work well on iPads AND PCs." Don't try and do both.

Session: Let’s Hangout: Bringing Learning to Every Employee Everywhere
Speakers: Tara Higgins and Mari Capps

So this is a good example of how a focused and compelling case study can look. Higgins and Capps told a fascinating story about a training difficulty at Google: they were having a terrible time getting learners from outside their hub cities to actually attend internal in-class training. They tried a number of different training options (e.g. converting content to e-Learning, webinars, videotaping classes, and video conferencing), but those alternatives just didn't work for a number of valid reasons. They knew they needed a solution to make classes available to all employees, regardless of location, but would also provide participation opportunities for all learners.

What they eventually found worked was a new service Google was developing at the time: Hangouts. If you've never used Hangouts before, the basic explanation it this: it's an easy-to-use video chat service that can support up to 10 chatters on the free version (15 on the business edition). You can learn more by checking out this link. It was a cheap solution, company-owned, simple to use, web-based, and allowed for more interactive capabilities than any of the other options Higgins and Capps had tried before. After converting a few classes to Hangouts sessions, they found that the learners liked them too.

Overall, a happy story, but it wasn't without some hiccups:

• Their facilitators, so used to in-class student interactions, have continued to have a hard time feeling comfortable with this new way of teaching. 
• Hangouts also doesn't have traditional breakout rooms, which initially caused some design issues (although they found a sensible workaround by having the learners set up their own additional Hangouts and then had the facilitator bounce from Hangout to Hangout checking on their progress).
• Learner engagement is trickier to catch and keep.
• While learners have pretty much bought in to the Hangouts classes, some stakeholders/business partners still aren't completely on board.

Now, why did I like it so much? While, as @JS_Dilon so correctly assessed yesterday, it didn't teach me anything I didn't already know about how Hangouts worked, it did give me a great example I can take back to work of how an established company used video chats for training. And if you know anything about working for a big company, you know how much they like other people trying out new training techniques first. Plus, Higgins and Capps were high quality storytellers. This is a component I've noticed isn't included in many case studies I've seen but is vital to making it a relatable and vivid experience.

The only downside? They were very uncomfortable with us taking photos of the session and outright against any videotaping, all for legal reasons. When you're going to a conference, especially one like Learning Solutions where there's so much sharing that takes place at the event, it's a bit surprising to see presenters put limits on sharing the content they were presenting, particularly since I didn't think there was any truly proprietary information included on their slides. Disappointing.

And so...

That's it for Day 2. Day 3 coming up in the next day or two.