Book Club: Design for How People Learn Chapters 1-3

we are so excited to be here this Wednesday afternoon for our first ever book club in our hangout so this is super exciting our book is designed for how people learn and we're really excited to be talking through this book with you and sharing some of the Nuggets that we've picked

up in the book and really excited to learn what you picked up from your studies [Music] this is a really phenomenal book produced by Julie Dirksen and if you haven't read it yet don't worry about it don't you can still learn from other people as we discuss it and I did notice through

the sign up form that we have both like brand new instructional designers people who are aspiring to be instructional designers and experienced instructional designers who are participating in this book club so that's a really great place for us to be because we can hear and learn from the experiences of everyone no matter where they are on their instructional design Journey so here with

me I have Joanie Musser she is one of our alumni in our instructional design and Tech accelerator program she is what I call a mega learner a prolific learner every time I talk to Joni she's telling me what oh I'm in this class or I just did this or I participated in this event so she is the perfect person to be leading us through this book study I'm so excited good to have you here with us

Joanie so thank you for organizing this um and I'm going to turn this over to Joni to get us started okay hey everybody I'm so excited that you all are joining us for this this is something that I have been wanting to do for several months I got a quick question for everybody does your book look

like mine well it's kind of blurry but do you see all the um tabs I have all right I've read more than chapters one two through three already but I've reread them so that I can guide you all through this study here's our first question while you were reading any of the three chapters here

what was your aha moment did you have one did something that Julie Dirksen wrote make you go wow I never thought of it that way or oh my gosh this is a revolution or a revelation to myself that you thought I'm going to apply this now next time I design a course or the next time I work with a subject matter expert trying to put together what we need to work with for our

Learners so what are some of your aha moments go ahead and throw them in the chat for us aha moment the Gap may not be knowledge so it might be the course is not a solution I love that that was for Melanie Melanie's telling us that it's not always a solution that you need to write a

course sometimes it could be like a job aid right yeah I love that uh my biggest aha moment came in um chapter three and what I love about Julie's book it doesn't matter where you are on your journey there is something in this book for you so you could be brand new and it there is

so much in there or you could be experienced you'd be like oh yeah that's a really great way of looking at this so whenever I was reading through chapter three there it there were a bunch of things in chapter three like I like the scale of proficiency and like the different I think it was thalheimer's learning objective descriptions I thought those were all really cool the way that

those were presented but I and I kind of broke it out whenever I wrote some notes down about three but so whatever you are talking about out um like what's the problem that you're trying to solve you know where is the learner today where do you want the learner to be and then

what's the bridge but like the thing that really stood out to me is like really thinking about well how far do you want to take that learner right because you're not always taking the learner from beginning all the way to the end you're moving them along a Continuum and so sometimes you you just you've got to Define what that is like we're not expecting people to be experts

in some cases with some of the learning solutions that we create but it's like it was like oh man I've never really thought about like where does the learn like what's the key point that I need them to arrive at so that was like my aha moment in that I thought that was a really good one yeah

I agree with that one it makes you really kind of take a step back and think about where they are going and what that end product really looks like especially if any of you do um use backward design and you really have to think about what is it at the end that we want them to learn and then design backward from that that's kind of what it made me think of Shantae when you were saying that

um I wanted to let you know page 29 is where Katie had got her um idea of what type of learner she is and somebody else mentioned all of the different types of learning gaps so page 20 if you take a look at page 20 really quick page 20 not only lists all the different types of

learning gaps but it gives you the questions that you can ask so that you can identify what type of learning Gap your learners may have so I really like that piece there too page 21 um is what I believe Melanie was referring to so you can ask this question what do they actually

need to do with this information how are they going to actually apply it in the real world and I think that's the theme that you're going to see throughout the book that Julie keeps asking us is is this what the learner's really going to use why do they need to know this information or why do why do they need to apply this information what difference is it going to make and what they

do every day on page 35 the title says your learners want to feel want to not feel stupid right don't you want everybody in your that you're working with to feel that they have some knowledge because you want to excite them and motivate them right well at the bottom that's what it says here your job is to make your learners feel smart it doesn't matter their learning ability it doesn't

matter their level of experience you want them to feel smart even more importantly they should feel capable and I thought you know what that's something that I'm going to pin up and make sure that I keep that in the back of my mind when I'm designing my learner personas and what I'm working with the actual design of or I should say yeah the design of what I'm putting together I just want

to add to that you know even even in leadership and Leadership trainings and things like that you often hear that it's important to create small wins or small successes along the way so when we're talking about making a learner feel smart or making them feel capable it's about building in in

those success points along that path so there is some correlation to you know some of the other types of development that we're doing where we're developing leaders we're talking about developing learning Solutions and I think just even it's just good in practice you know where anytime we're learning something new if we run into a bunch of obstacles like where we keep failing we're not

going to want to keep learning that right we'll be like oh I suck at this you know I'm never going to be good at this but if we build in those wins along the way for our Learners then the experience is better they enjoy it more they feel like they get more value out of it and for sure the rating

probably at the end of The Learning Experience will be higher because people felt good in it so it's about creating that safe path for them and to make it safe for them to learn in that environment so I thought that that was a really good one too I had written down in aha I kind of you know like I

didn't just do it for chapters one through three I wrote it down for one two and three three but for two that is what I wrote down about making them feel smart so I thought that was a really good one oh April April's on here hey April um yeah page 35 just what Shantae was talking about we have to make them feel comfortable and acceptable and create that environment

that they're going to feel safe learning and safe to make mistakes especially when we're doing our um messy first drafts of things that we want someone to look at it right we don't want to I don't want to hand it over and someone tell me oh this is really just horrible and I'm like I tried so hard at least find some successes in what I did or what you're doing for the learn for the

Learners that you're putting things together for okay so what's a good question two now since we keep talking about our learner personas let's reflect on one maybe you've created one for a training maybe you created one for portfolio asset what should you know about your learners before designing a learning solution go ahead and put your answers in the chat I'll give you

a second to think about it what should you know about them before designing that learning solution what I love about chapters one two and three and I think that you said this in in our prep call is that we're really getting into analyzing right or analyzing what the problem is that we're trying

to solve what the needs of the learner are so I really love like how how much time that Julie and her first three chapters has really invested in this analysis piece because it's so important to make sure that we're on the right track that we hit that right destination as our final outcome

let's see Chris says exactly what they need to be able to do after the training yes we need to be able to design for exactly that Melanie says motivation hmm yes why are they here why are they learning yes and what is what is their motivation there's that whole chart that

is in here about the different types of motivation you know you have some of those Learners who come in and they're like yeah why am I here I already know this they may not know everything but they think they do and we have to find a way to turn that around you might have to ball and told they

have to the ball and told absolutely yeah I have to be here I have to do this or are Learners who just think that it's a waste of their time when am I ever going to use this and we have to kind of turn that around so I think that is something that we need to know about before

designing learning solution did anybody find it interesting that um doing the walk through like going through and talking to Learners before you design the training and getting their perspective yeah it's to me whenever I have the opportunity to do this when building learning Solutions it's

always it's so eye-opening like how the learner will describe what their needs are versus what management believes their needs are there's usually a pretty big gap in between like what a learner thinks they what they need and what management thinks they need and then as an instructional designer like how are we threading you know between those two to

make sure that we're meeting the needs of both so I think that's really a really interesting um conundrum that we can sometimes find ourselves in so page 55 talks about that if you have your book turn there this is actually one of my aha moments as well you know it she has three bullets right at the top Julie does and it says talk about your learners follow your learners around

try stuff out with them so if you've already kind of put some questions together or you put a learning little learning experience together or scenario have them try it out in a less formal environment and see how they respond to it and I thought that was kind of Genius too the other thing that I was thinking about when I was reading that section was

you know what's the difference between what what that experienced person on the job does versus someone who's less experienced and if I'm building this training for both of them where is the gap between what that less experienced person or or person knows and

how do I merge that Gap is it only knowledge or does it have to do with their experience and maybe the way they're performing that skill and could a training not be necessary if the less experienced um employee just job Shadows the other one and and learns little Sarah says I agree with so many of

these her first thing is their past experiences I like to know where they're coming from and a lot of the time the answer is they're coming from all over the place they have so much experience and maybe we just need to kind of like reel them in and decide which part of their experiences really

relate to the skill or um the element that we're trying to teach or put in our training and then you got to think about okay is it a knowledge Gap is it a motivation Gap again and um if you guys look at I know this is back in chapter one but this takes me back to page 14 when

we're talking about habit gaps so think about that experienced learner or participant in your course what if you're having to show them something that's a new way of doing what they've already done for years and years and years you have to break that habit I think

Sarah brought this up in one of the chats earlier unlearning something to relearn it and does anybody remember what the book said what Julie says about how we get them to unlearn and relearn its practice you have to include a lot of practice I remember um saying a lot when I was

years ago I say to my students practice is not or I would have them finish my sentence I would say practice makes and they would say perfect and I would say no it doesn't practice makes permanent practices what gets you in the habit of doing something so if you have to break a habit you

have to practice a different way and that takes repetition Time After Time After Time so keep that in mind that's one of those gaps that we might find happening even if the person is experienced you know it's funny Joni as a parent whenever I go to help my daughter with math and the way

that they do math like I have to unlearn the way that I learn to do math because the way that they are teaching kids today is totally different so every time I go into and I'm just like if they would just do it this way or why are they making this so complicated but after I and this school is

really smart because they send home like a how-to for parents so that we learn how to do the new math but once I get through it I'm like oh this makes sense but I had a natural resistance because I had already learned one way it was already automated for me so I had to practice it a new

way in order to see the value in that really I think that with your person that's already experienced one way sometimes it can be a little bit harder because you have to break some habits you have to introduce a new way of learning but there is a natural resistance or friction in that so where a newer person might come in and just be like oh so this is how you do it and this is

great somebody that's already experienced in one way it's kind of like a change management right like you have to you have to like break through some barriers I think that what Julie had written if I remember because I took I took a note down for something else that I'm working on for someone that I'm coaching and it says that there's a lot of backsliding and

grumpiness that comes with this unlearning and trust me whenever I'm talking about the new way of doing math I've had a lot of grumpiness and a lot of backsliding like here let me just show you how to do it like this which is not right I should have just plugged into the new way but yes if you all look at page 42 in your book there is a little section there turn there real quick too

that talks about scaffolding and that some of you are Educators currently some of you are transitioning out of the world of um K-12 or maybe you're just aspiring to do something different with instructional design but we've all had to deal with scaffolding our instruction and that is so that we can meet the Learners where they are and have those different levels

for instruction or for the learn to close that learning Gap so you know you wouldn't give a beginner the highest the hardest thing to do because it might frustrate them right so we're going to scaffold it we're going to break it down and when it comes to my mind is in the past when we've built instruction we will do the what I call the I do where I show you what

you need to know and I model it for you we do we do it together here's a little activity that we're all going to try out and and see how we do well or learn from our mistakes and then there's the you do show me what you know show me what you learned reflect on it demonstrate what you can

do right so I do we do you do but if you look on page um 43 so start on page 42 where the title is scaffold the incline go over to page 43 the first bullet reduce the complexity of the environment now this made me think it says to scaffold their learning experience you can fade out all but a

few of the key controls for the first scenarios so and then you gradually add those controls back in here's what she's actually saying turn it around do the you do first show me what you know then when you see what they're not understanding pull back a little

bit work on those specific elements that they're not understanding or they're not successful with and then if there's still an element that they're not very good with then you can pull back and do it could be direct instruction what I'm saying is do a one-on-one with a learner if necessary um have a conversation with them show them specifically so it's turning it around it's a flip

so in this time we're doing the do you do now let's do it together because I see where you're struggling and now I see you're struggling more I'll do it and then you give it back to them and have them do it again so it kind of reverses that scaffold a little bit and I thought that was interesting what do we have here on page 65

learning objectives do any of you know what we start most our learning objectives with yep Abby's like it looks like Bloom's taxonomy you got it so here's what I think is very interesting with this section I marked page 68 and 69 because if you read what it has said Julie is that says the flip it

so you'll notice on page 68 the chart she gives when it has the taxonomy it doesn't start with remember or knowledge at the bottom it starts with create give the Learners elements a product a photo something and have them do an of course if it's like graphic design have

them do then mock above the advertisement um she has another way of looking at it by scaling it on page 69 and when I read that I was like oh my gosh this this makes so much sense because what we're really doing here is evaluating is this something the learner will actually be able to do

in the real world and how will we know that's the second question how can we tell if they've done it if we reverse the Bloom's taxonomy and we have them create it first then we can identify what their strengths are what their weaknesses are and fill in that Gap strong extra verbs yep Katie one of the things that we do in our training needs analysis too like

whenever we are working with our stakeholders or clients whoever they are and we're talking about The Learning Experience what does success look like right because that is how we expect our stakeholders to identify whether or not or one of the ways that we expect our business owners

to evaluate whether the training or the learning solution was worthwhile you know did it change this for a certain Behavior did it you know change in okr or influence an okr in some way so always asking you know what does success look like I think is an important question

absolutely and you're working with a subject matter expert or a stakeholder and they can't Define for you exactly what they want success to look like then we have a lot a few more questions to ask people we can move on without designing that right right and I also I also like though that Julie says like one of her prompts in there is like what's a negative

consequence of not doing this right so it's not just about success and thinking about okay if everything goes well and this is successful you know what does that look like but the other question probably even the more important question is what's the negative consequence if we don't get this right right because that could really affect those kpis as well

yeah it can affect kpis sometimes people are in our our learning experiences that we create because there's something about their job that they're not doing well at so let's say we miss the mark on it and then they're not improving in their performance so maybe they don't get a merit increase or a pay raise or maybe ultimately they get let go in some way so sometimes there

are some really negative consequences that can be associated with missing the mark on being successful question number three have you applied or how will you apply an idea or ideas discussed in these chapters or if you haven't yet made the transition into instructional design you're still working through that you could be thinking you could answer this question with how you might

apply it in the future right you don't have to have an actual example but you might have some ideas about how you might use it and let me just put out there that our community is safe we know that we are all on a Learning Journey so don't like you're gonna put something out there and be judged for it because this group is about lifting each other up and not being like oh no no that's

not right so don't worry about that put whatever ideas you have out there and let us help you build on that so feel like this is a safe space for that Rish me um talks about learning objectives and she still struggles sometimes to frame them um girl I do too I look at learning objectives a

lot that other people have written and I have to reword them and sometimes I struggle with that what exactly are they trying to say here what do they want their learner to do I get that totally um Katie you and I must have like the same brain wave here because I was going to go right there I'll be thinking about what is a fast or a slow skill and how to build around each of those that's

exactly what I have if you want to know what we're talking about it's on page 77 that's the page I was trying to flip to a second ago when I accidentally pulled the wrong tab um and I even made a note in my book it's easy to implement those right-of-way skill skills from immediate impact but sometimes some skills are going to take a little bit more time and so we have to be able

to identify those fast versus slow perfect April says she's going to be leveraging the experts more in classes to help with the novices oh what a great idea like pair up the more experienced learner with someone who doesn't have that much experience and have them learn from each other I

love that this has been super fun Joni thank you so much for leading this today organizing this and I love how y'all y'all tell me what you think I love how Joni came with like the page numbers look at this page page number thank you for doing this and thank you to everyone who participated [Music]