Visual Communication is a Core Competency

e-Learning expert Tom Kuhlmann recently posted an article called "Essential Guide to Visual Thinking for E-Learning" in which he shared links to a number of great resources on Visual Thinking. 

Tom's post got me thinking about the importance of visual thinking and how so many of my influencers would probably consider visual thinking among their most valuable competencies.

These are people who are tops in their areas of focus: consultants, authors, speakers, inventors, entrepreneurs, and true thought leaders (not self-proclaimed). It makes a lot of sense that visual thinking would be so consistently prized among them. They are, after all, thinking beyond the norm; connecting ideas and concepts that may have never before been connected. Having a visual way to do this is bound to facilitate the kinds of expansive thinking in which they so often engage. 

I've heard it said that people can generally process pictures and symbols faster than they can read and interpret words. What's more, if you're explaining something and you show an image that visually conveys your ideas along with your words, isn't it easier for people to understand the ideas and concepts you're sharing? We need only to look back on our own experiences to confirm this is true. 

So why not invest in our own visual communication competency? And where better to start than visual thinking? 

Reading the article reminded me of the "40 Days of Doodling Challenge" posed by a number of my friends. It essentially works like this: 

1. Learn something about visual thinking and visual communication (that's where the article comes in, but there are many, many other resources to draw from). 

2. Every day for 40 days, draw something to convey a concept or idea that you would normally express in words. 

3. Post your drawings to social media. (This helps you get feedback and encouragement, as well as encourages your friends to improve their own competency as well.) You don't have to post them all, but of course, if you do, you'll create a handy visual reference to your progress.

The thing is, you don't have to be an artist to do the 40 Days of Doodling Challenge; it's not about drawing pretty pictures, but rather, using simple images to convey ideas. 

Why 40 days? The idea is that if you do something for 40 days, you'll get comfortable enough with it to form a habit. I do, however, know some folks who are doing 100 Days of Doodling, and it's easy to see that their skills are improving even more, and they seem to be having more fun! 

If you read this article and watch the linked videos, you'll have been exposed to the basic concepts you need to begin your own 40 Days of Doodling Challenge. 

In the end, you'll never regret improving your own visual communication and visual thinking competencies, and you'll find that you use these skills virtually every day and in almost every aspect of your life.

Visual Thinking and Design Books I Like: (from newest to oldest)

Malamed, Connie. "Visual Design Solutions: Principles and Creative Inspiration for Learning Professionals," 2015.

Brown, Sunni. "The Doodle Revolution: Unlock the Power to Think Differently", 2014

Rohde, Michael. "The Sketchnote Handbook: the illustrated guide to visual note taking," 2012.

Malamed, Connie. "Visual Language for Designers: Principles for Creating Graphics that People Understand", 2011.

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xAPI Privacy Questions: Who Should Own My Experience Data?

Years ago I was involved with a company that dealt with medical informatics. Among other things, this small firm was building an innovative Electronic Health Record (EHR); this was not too many years after the passage of the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA), and the design team faced some interesting questions about the data they would be capturing. While the need to manage the privacy of the data was not in question, the ownership of the data was.

Think about it: I'm a patient. The data is just representations of my health, so in a sense, I generated the data. Shouldn't it belong to me, almost in the sense of a unique composition of music belonging to the author?

Experience data is or can be as personal as health information. It is, after all, a reflection of life choices, thoughts, and performance. While a company paying me to take an e-learning course may have some de facto right to use the captured scores from assessments, as we move toward a more distributed model of experience information capture, who else should have the right to see that information?

Does a prospective employer have the right to scan my xAPI records and infer certain thinking patterns and qualities based on an analysis of my choices, learning outcomes, and other experiences? Could that be part of the application process they require of prospective employees? Will they need a waiver from me--a HIPAA-like consent document?

A simple illustration of experience data in action:

Google is capturing a lot of information about my behavior. Here's a map of where I traveled one Saturday, courtesy of Google location services on my Android phone and Google Location History (https://maps.google.com/locationhistory/b/0).

Between the timestamp, GPS, and distance information, I can quickly see a picture of how "fast" I rode my bike in the morning. And there's pretty good evidence here that I went to watch the Norfolk Tides beat Pawtucket 3 to 1.

I choose to share this information with Google. I see a fair exchange. I'm getting value from their network collecting detailed information about my activities when they turn that into information I can use. And they extract insight from my data that enables them, on a grander scale, to identify patterns of human behavior, which they use to generate revenue through targeted ad sales, marketing insights, services, and much, much more. Information is the currency that fuels their business model. I'm sure they'd like to get their hands on the details of performance that will someday be generated by my xAPI data. And yours.

The questions that linger with me are: Who will be able to sell them that information? And in the end, who has the right to decide if and how they can use it?


Other thoughts on data ownership:

My friend, Aaron Silvers has been quite involved in xAPI for years; you can read some of his recent thoughts on this topic here.

Is "Forty Days of Dating" the New Soap Format?

Just happened upon this really interesting project. The web design is compelling, but what really strikes me is the transition of the medium to the web: this is essentially a drama (soap opera) played out over time, and then formatted into a compelling story and released over time. Really interesting format to generate interest.

FYI, there is some PG-13+ language used in some parts of the dialog.

The content may not be representative of what we'll be watching in the future, but the format may be.

http://fortydaysofdating.com/

Take a gander; then come back here and let me know your thoughts.

Reminds me of Jason Merkoski's questions about the future of reading. Here we have a story, based on real experiences, that is primarily in written form, but played out over time. The authors are the actors (though they're not really acting), as well as the designers.

Is design skill the new essential for authors? Me thinks there is a change in the wind.

Jerry Seinfeld loves e-Learning!

It came to me in a dream last night, but it was just as real as the Gucci handbag I'll be sporting on my way into work this morning: Jerry Seinfeld absolutely loves e-Learning!

I first noticed him pulling bags from the trunk of his car as my son and a new friend we'd just met were walking down the quiet Manhattan street. I thought I recognized him from somewhere, but his name didn't immediately pop into my head.

"Joe!" he hollered out as we walked past the front of his nondescript sedan. "Jerry. Jerry Seinfeld." It all came rushing back. I had met Jerry at an e-Learning conference the year before. He'd inserted himself into every conversation about e-Learning that he could find, hanging out in the lobby bar until way past midnight to talk about practical, but fun ways to leverage social media for learning, how reusable learning objects may just have arrived before their time, and whether or not tracking informal learning transmuted it into formal learning.

"Hi Jerry, what have you been up to?" I piped back at him, turning to focus, at least for a moment.

"Oh, the usual, telling jokes to throngs of adoring fans. Nothing exciting, really. But what about you? What have you been doing? Have you built any new courses? Get your hands on any new tools? What about Storyline? What's that all about? I keep seeing references to it on the blogs and it sounds really exciting."

"Lots of questions, Jerry. Well, yes, I've been doing a ton of courses and my team--they've been really rocking the learning scene at Amerigroup, putting together really interesting stuff on clinical quality management topics like HEDIS, NCQA accreditation, and Continuous Quality Improvement. They did a course on Sickle Cell Disease and another on HIV. Actually, we just had a bunch of courses get national accreditation. But really, we're still up against the same challenges that we talked about last time. How do you crank out really good courses quicker and quicker?"

"e-Learning, Joe! e-Learning is the answer. I can't get enough of it!"

"Yeah, I remember you're a pretty big fan."

"Who wouldn't be? The infographics, the scenarios, the stories--and the jokes."

"Gotta have those jokes."

"No more page-turners!"

"Couldn't agree more, Jerry. Hey, it was great seeing you. We're headin' over to the park to hang out, so I'd better get going."

"Great seeing you too, Joe. We should get together again. Are you going to any e-Learning conferences next year?"

"Yeah, I've got a couple lined up. I'm going to the Guild conference in the Spring."

"I'm going to the Guild conference too--Learning Solutions 2012! I already registered and booked a flight! Hey, is Jane going to be there? Let's get together with Jane!"

"I'm sure she'll be there, Jerry. Why don't we try to set up a dinner one night and try to get everyone together so we can talk e-learning like old times."

"Awesome! I can't wait!"

As I turned around, I realized the kids (my son surprisingly younger in my dream than he is in real life) had already made their way to the park ahead of me, so I hurried off to find them hanging out at the monkey bars. "Who was that, dad."

"That was Jerry Seinfeld."

"Must be one of those e-Learning geeks," my son told his new friend. "My dad knows a lot of e-Learning geeks."

"Yep. He's one of those e-Learning geeks," I confirmed. I realized I was starting to think of him in the context of those friends I see a few times a year at conferences and online talking about the same things that interest me for the rest of the year. Seldom in person, but always very near.

As I reflected on the encounter, I remembered that Jerry was known throughout the world for engaging audiences, and that he'd only recently been drawn to e-Learning as a passion and a hobby. I thought of how the old, page-turner models we used to over-use would repel him just as quickly as really interesting e-Learning attracted him to the field. It reminded me that as we plan and design e-Learning solutions, it would pay us to consider how it would impact the average learner. It makes sense for us to constantly ask ourselves how they'll react to each part of the course or module. Before we go forward building any new design, we should ask ourselves: "What would Jerry do?"

Open Clip Art Library

Stumbled upon a fairly significant library of open source clip art at openclipart.org. Simple search features, vector images, and all in the public domain. What more could you want?

Here's a screenshot of a simple search I did that yielded a couple pages of presidential images:

The site, which was started back in 2004 boasts hundreds of thousands of images available. Maybe you have some you'd like to contribute too. :-)

Editing MS Vector Clipart in Inkscape

I'm working on a new learning model and I needed a vector graphics tool to help me produce a visual representation of the model. I came across Inkscape, with which I'm quite impressed. It's an open source product that strives to capture some of the functionality of Illustrator, Corel Draw, and Visio. It appears to do most of what I need. One of the great things I realized while playing with Inkscape was the ability to pull a vector image in from the Microsoft Clipart library and edit it in Inkscape. Just copying from PowerPoint won't bring over the vectors; instead, you must copy the item from the clipart library, as shown here.

Then, just Paste in Inkscape and the individual vector pieces are placed. The image below shows where I've updated an avatar with a better wardrobe and hair style. I also changed his eye color and moved the corners of his mouth down in protest. '-) Inkscape produces SVG graphics, so the edited images looked nice and clean in Inkscape; I just did a copy and paste back into PowerPoint to illustrate the changes. Here are a couple of samples in Inkscape. Context menus provide you plenty of options, including the ability to ungroup grouped vectors:

Below, you can see that vectors come through quite well and can easily be modified.

Again, for my needs, it's a pretty robust tool...and certainly worth investigating.

Have fun! Joe

Learner Engagement

I've been spending the last year focused on two key topics: creativity and learner engagement. Fortunately, I've found that a lot of others are focused on these topics.

Mid-year in 2010, I did a session on Autonomous Engagement and introduced a concept I call "the five opportunities" framework for autonomous learning. The opportunities are:

Assess - learners gain an awareness of their autonomy and the opportunity for self-direction.

Introspect - learners need opportunities to determine what is important, especially at the beginning of the learning, and to construct complex meaning throughout the learning.

Engage - Experience-based activities provide the grounds for proof, as well self-validation of competency.

Reflect - Reconsideration throughout the learning helps learners determine what should be integrated and how. It also helps them decide what to forget.

Share - We all are compelled to make contributions and become advocates for the ideas that we share.

I've shared this model with about 400 people now and it's generated a bit of buzz at conferences and in online sessions. I'd be interested in your thoughts...and would be happy to flesh out more details.