Category: Learning Technology

This post is going to pick up some of the interesting bits from this recent conversation (recorded via Zoom and available on YouTube):

Leonard and I were in similar Higher Education circles a decade or so back and he has always been a good person to follow on social media, he was also excellent on the Learning Hack a while back. Guy is, of course, a “must sub” YouTube channel for L&D folks.

Just some of the bits I liked from this conversation (apologies if I’ve captured anything wrong):

1. The odd UK ignoring of “instructional design” in preference for “learning design”, albeit with little clarity why.
   • I picked my MSc at the time as it was the only postgrad in the UK that specifically said it was doing ID and not LD or something else.
2. Around 9:45 – “the mark of a true profession is consistency of terms and definitions” (Guy quoting from a past speech he heard).
   • This is very good point and interesting given my current work role and the fact that definitions are usually the first thing agreed before work can move on elsewhere.
3. “Technology” should be application of science – not talking about the digital, online tools, etc.
4. Sex Ed. vs Sex Training.
   • I’m going to borrow this from Bob/Guy for the difference between education (more general) and training (practical application, practice, etc).
5. Lack of consistency in language difficult – never going to happen?
   • Perhaps standards and agreed profiles could finally improve this?
6. Nothing new at conferences etc – partly as need to support always incoming people
   • I’ve previously suggested L&D conferences/shows could try and have “tracks” for more intro and higher-level things.
7. I’m always amazed how both Leonard and Guy are able to recall authors, presenter names, etc. Whilst I read a lot of ID theory in my masters I am terrible for recalling a lot of this information – even though a lot is embedded in my practice. For example, I always forget it was Richard Clark with the 70% stat for SME knowledge.
8. “Task set”
   • The never ending need to push performance-orientation!

Following on from my previous post, here are some more thoughts about the PUP.

Difficulties with learning media

On a weekly call the feedback from other attendees/participants was that they wanted more video-based guidance (in preference to text instruction that is used a lot on learn.microsoft.com).

Were they correct in thinking the videos are more useful?

In my opinion what is going on here is that video, of course, can be helpful for knowing the steps to follow. I, for example, regularly need YouTube to remind me the steps for doing rarely used things in PPT and XLS files. However, videos are often quickly out-of-date and more difficult to maintain than documentation, so it is understandable why a lot of the Microsoft courseware is not video based.

However, text instructions with limited image support is very tricky to use if out-of-date, there are a few examples where I have simply skipped doing parts of the PuP as I am unable to find the start point in the resources. This again is, I think, in part due to the complexities of the setup needed to complete the whole programme and needing to enable free trials of different components.

Keeping content up-to-date

As mentioned above, keeping IT training materials up-to-date is hard. This is why most L&D departs will outsource this for generic tools (like MS Office tools).

There has been one particularly bad example in PUP where the guidance referred to features not previously introduced in the course. When I raised this in the related weekly live Q&A it was revealed this functionality had actually been depreciated – basically meaning a lot of wasted learner time as I, and others, tried to figure out how to follow the instructions, finding that pages found online also didn’t help, etc.

Enabling trainers/community managers

Many of us will have been in training sessions where the trainer has been hamstrung by permissions, sandbox restrictions or some other kind of technical issue. The champions, who hold the weekly PuP calls, are clearly knowledgeable but have difficulty demonstrating items in the live Q&A as they have their own accounts, setup for their own businesses that are tricky to demonstrate to people using the trial versions.

These champions/MVPs are clearly knowledgible but fall into many of the traps experienced facilitators know to try and avoid – like using acronyms, jumping around tech interfaces without explanation, etc. I doubt Microsoft has provided them with basic facilitation training and instead I presume these are volunteer MVPs doing this for their own CVs rather than being fully supported to do the job.

Ultimately I stopped joining the weekly calls as they were not hugely helpful for some of these reasons.

LMS/system setup

The first blog post mentioned some trickiness in getting things setup. Some of the weeks material has been particularly confusing – for example a video that specifically ends with “let’s get started” and explaining the week’s activities was actually the last thing in the LMS menu for that week. Personally this was very confusing in trying to figure out what I was supposed to be doing – only to watch the video when I had effectively thought “I’ve given up on this topic”.

Possibilities vs Process vs Practicalities

The step-by-step instructions on how to do things in most of the course have not been hugely helpful in trying to work out if any of these tools would be useful in my own workplace scenario. There have been some examples shown but I could have done with a real focus on this to show the possibilities of the tools, with the processes being replaced outlined to show the practical benefits. Again, this is perhaps a classic example of IT training being focused on the tools, UI and making things work rather than than answering the “why”.

At the end of the week by week materials there are some interviews with three people who have transitioned into (no/low code) developers. These were inspiring, for example a Heathrow airport security guard who transitioned into an IT role. However, I still couldn’t see why these solutions worked over simpler options I could think of.

I am going to fail

As I have been unexpectedly busier at work than I was planning and have some travel planned, that I was not anticipating, I am almost certainly going to fail the course.

I have got through all the materials but I am unlikely to finish the assignment in time.

The assignment is actually a nice scenario asking you to put together some solutions for a fake business scenario and related issues. The instructions are pretty clear as are the assessment criteria.

However, receiving the task about half through the programme means there are early modules I struggled to follow (either due to technical or me issues) that I will have to revisit in detail to pass the assignment.

If I don’t manage to finish it will be a shame as the certification in this case would have been nice (given it is a more robust programme than just going through the Microsoft Learn components) even if I am critical of certifications at times.

24/7 live support is the only answer to really handhold someone through new tools when they are new new – i.e. a new concept, with new processes, etc. and not just new UI over a word processor, image work or something else the user is already familiar with. With ChatGPT and other tools we may perhaps be in a position where we can offer true 24/7 support which helps people get through learning experiences and tackle issues. For example, where trying to use Virtual Agents I just kept hitting this error without any clear reason why (I later found a document on the LMS about setup but for some reason this document did not show by default when using the “next, next, next” option in the LMS):

Conclusion

Ultimately we would hope that IT tools are becoming easy to use and intuitive. However, my approach for a number of years now probably remains the same – roughly being:

(1) everyone needs an overview of the process,

(2) they need an idea of the possibilities and benefits from the change and you can

(3) then focus on the “click here click here” type instruction – which, depending on how static the development of the tool is, may be best served in a number of ways (e.g. training if going to be used straight away, ongoing support resources, etc).

I have recently been accepted into cohort 3 of the Microsoft Power Up Program (MPUP).

Microsoft Power Up Program enables non-tech professionals to successfully advance into a new career path in low-code application development using Microsoft Power Platform

https://powerup.microsoft.com/

I have played around with a few of the no/low code tools in O365/M365 (and some non-Microsoft tools) so I am looking forward to this program to learn more and formalize skills in this area.

Setup

The initial setup is not as easy as might be expected. Rather than using my corporate M365 account, or my personal one for that matter, I received a new account just for the MPUP. Due to the difficulty in switching between M365 accounts, I have setup using the MPUP’s platform in a different browser to what I normally use. The temporary password having to be changed before accessing the platform.

This is of course a well known issue for anyone working in learning tech – you need to make things simple and, sometimes, SSO options can actually complicate things (less of an issue for a control audience like internal staff in a corporate L&D environment).

Platform

Microsoft’s potential impact on the learning tech market has been a topic ever since I starting working in learning (15+ years). The potential that 100s of commercial LMS could be destroyed by a real MS market entry has presumably been in the risk section of many such corporations’ long term planning. More recently, the Viva Learning approach has suggested something of a hybrid model with a MS approach (Viva) bringing 3rd-party LMS content/experiences into Teams and elsewhere.

Therefore, it is always interesting to do MS courses/online learning and see what their approach is. In this case it would seem they are using Adobe products (I’m not sure if this is a common partnership across other things?). Therefore in relation to first impressions this post relates both to the Microsoft approach but also Adobe’s service – under the auspice of “https://cpcontents.adobe.com/” (I presume these are Captivate Prime URLs?).

The introduction section included a number of videos outlining the curriculum structure. This outlined the self-study (videos, exercises, quiz, etc) and synchronous (online Q&A) structure. The video introducing the LMS is nearly 12 minutes long (!). Ultimately this feels way too long. There is then a whole video on how discussion boards work – now I appreciate discussion boards might not be familiar to all (especially younger) web users but my oh my this is a way to till kill interest in a learning experience.

The next step was then to setup Power Apps access. The course includes a workflow chart to explain the 3 accounts you will need to have and how you will need to be working between 2 browsers. No doubt this is natural to MS admins but the need for a workflow graphic just to explain access would suggest this is all a bit overwhelming. Ultimately you end up needing a “learner” browser for the LMS and a “developer” browser for the Power Apps access. However, you are soon then into using learn.microsoft content which is ANOTHER system. I appreciate this is reuse of content but its a mess of a user/learner experience. Even worse, I am pretty sure I have done some of these Microsoft Learn components before but that was on a different machine/browser. Worse again the Learn content has a mix of approaches – in some areas you get a VM to work on via a login process, in other areas you are expected in login to a PowerApps system yourself.

Hopefully things will get smoother now up and running…