0:00:02.180,0:00:05.524
- So, hello everyone.
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I'd like to state and for the record,[br]
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I love the blue dots.
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(audience laughs)
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I've been sitting there[br]watching the blue dots.
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So, I've been cast in the role of [br]the person who finds the problems
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with the topic that we're all praising.
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I do like agile design, I like it a lot.
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And I like the concept of [br]agile learning design,
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I like it a lot.
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But, you know, I've been in the field [br]of programming for many years.
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I've been in the field of learning design [br]for many years.
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I've worked on small projects,[br]I've worked on big projects,
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I've been the peon [br]at the bottom of the pile
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and currently I'm the program leader[br]responsible for producing outcomes.
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So I've seen it from different angles.
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And there's so many ways it can go wrong,
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especially when we move
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from the fairly static domain[br]of software design
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to the far less static domain[br]of learning design.
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That's learning design.[br]
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It's the least agile thing [br]you'll ever see.
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That's actually a graphic from IMS
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which produced the learning design [br]specification.
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That's supposed to be [br]pretty open and flexible,
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It's like a play with a director and roles[br]and all of that.
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But, you know, once you're into the thing,
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there isn't a whole lot of flexibility [br]happening
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and it leads to questioning just [br]what is it that we're up to
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when we are talking about [br]agile learning design?
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Are we talking about [br]agile learning design
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or are we talking about [br]the design of agile learning?
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Two different things.
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And it seems to me that [br]it doesn't make sense
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to give the instructional designers[br]all that freedom and flexibility
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if we're gonna march students[br]lockstep through
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a predefined kind of process.
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Here's what agile learning design[br]ought to look like.
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There's a flow.
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This is agile design generally, right?[br]
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And it's an iterative thing,
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and yet people don't talk [br]about that so much
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but it's an iterative thing.
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Each iteration is like designing a full[br]and complete product,
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and then you might spin off [br]some side things, some prototype things
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as you need to, but, you know, [br]version one, version two,
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you're doing the same thing over again.
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No course in the world,[br]well, maybe not no course,
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but few courses in the world [br]are designed that way.
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Courses progress from lesson one, [br]lesson two, lesson three, lesson four.
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They don't cover all of geometry [br]and then all of geometry in more detail
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and all of geometry in more detail.
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It's a different way of thinking[br]about the process.
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So, one of the major concepts[br]in agile learning design,
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in agile design generally, is the Scrum.
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The Scrum is basically [br]a self-organizing development team.
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It is originally drawn from the idea that
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programmers are the smartest people [br]in the world and do not need management.
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No, I'm just kidding, but there is [br]the idea here that
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the programmers know how to program, and[br]they know how to produce the outcomes,
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if they're left to do the job for [br]themselves, to organize for themselves.
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And indeed, in the Scrum meeting,[br]as you are mapping out the task,
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each of the tasks, in the Scrum,[br]is self-selected by the programmer.
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So, they're volunteering to jump in,[br]to do these things.
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They're taking commitments on themselves,[br]they're specifying how much time,
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how much effort will be required [br]to produce the commitment.
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So, okay, that's good[br]
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but this doesn't happen by magic.
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It takes time, and agile [br]is typically employed
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in larger software development projects.
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But when we're doing learning design,[br]we're doing something a lot smaller
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and a lot more precise.
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The question came up earlier, you know,
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"What about, you know, high-volume[br]instructional design?"
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Well, high-volume instructional design:[br]you don't have time for 3,4,5,6,7 weeks
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of your development team [br]organizing itself.
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Another problem:
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as your projects get bigger, and we've [br]worked on some very large projects,
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your teams get very large.
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If you think about [br]all the different people who can,
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and eventually will get involved[br]in the design of your learning,
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or in the delivery of your agile learning,
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you've got designers, you've got[br]subject matter experts,
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you've got programmers, you've got[br]human interaction specialists, etc.
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Eventually you get a very large,[br]very complex team.
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As you get larger teams, you do not[br]generate more efficiency, it's well known,
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you generate less efficiency.
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So, what's the solution?[br]Split the teams.
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Okay, now you have competing[br]development teams
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working on the same project.
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This sounds, like, you know, OK, [br]we've split the task, it's great.
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But when you split the task,
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you now have two different groups [br]of people with different objectives,
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different responsibilities.
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They're competing often for resources,[br]they're competing often for priority.
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We have a project where we had [br]two agile teams.
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We ended up with two versions [br]of the thing that we were developing.
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Basically, they had, they didn't split[br]into functional groups,
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they, what's the word for it? [br]
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Ah, when cells divide, mitosis.
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So basically, we got two small versions[br]of the project we were trying to create.
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Another pitfall:
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if you try to organize your groups into,[br]you know, okay,
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this group will do this part of it,[br]this group will do that part of it,
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you get specialized Scrums.
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So now, nobody's working on [br]the final project, on the final product.
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And there is the danger, and I've [br]seen this and we've had this,
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and in fact, I'm living this [br]at this very moment
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where everybody, all the teams [br]want to do the analysis bit,
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or the rapid prototyping bit.
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But we're trying to bring a product [br]to actual users, at the end.
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We want it to be a deliverable product.
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Nobody wants to do the last stage[br]of error testing, of hardening the code.
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That's the least popular scrum.
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So they go back to, they all want [br]to do prototyping again.
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Finally, well, not quite finally[br]but we're getting there,
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who is the product owner?
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In the Scrum process, [br]you're delivering outcomes
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and the idea is that, [br]as you go through each sprint,
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which is short-term cycle[br]through your development process,
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you're producing outcomes,[br]you're producing deliverables
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and these deliverables [br]are delivered to the product owner
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who will set the deliverable,[br]and even more importantly,
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define the conditions for the completion[br]of that deliverable.
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Did you do it or not?[br]How do you know?
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Well, you have to have certain criteria.[br]It passed this test.
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It produced this function.
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It has to be really solid [br]and concrete.
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Well, that good in education, or sorry, [br]that's good in software development,
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your product owner is your client,
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perhaps your architect, [br]somebody like that.
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They know what they want.
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Education is completely different.
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In education, there is [br]no product owner per se.
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Think about it, think about the different[br]populations that are involved in learning.
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There is the end user, [br]also known as the student,
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who, in the typical instructional design[br]process, does not show up until
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after the instructional design [br]has been done.
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It makes it very hard to be agile.
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There is the subject matter expert,[br]also known as the professor.
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The professor has his or her own ideas[br]of what the deliverable must be.
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Then there is the administrator, [br]the dean or the president,
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or the department of extended learning,[br]or whatever,
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who have other objectives, [br]often revenue objectives,
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or course completion objectives.[br]They have their own definition.
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All of these definitions are different.
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I guarantee you they're conflicting[br]and they're competing.
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You can't just pick one, [br]because if you pick one,
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you're not being agile for the others.
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What's worse?
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To have not just competing interests,[br]to have different levels of expertise.
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We're designing a system right now,
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where we're trying to create [br]agile learning itself.
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This is, I'm not going to talk [br]about that,
0:10:04.904,0:10:07.388
but that's not the purpose [br]of this particular talk,
0:10:07.388,0:10:12.797
but the ideas here is that[br]as the learning is unfolding,
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the process, the outcomes, [br]the deliverables and all of that
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can change [br]as the needs of the learner change.
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Very ambitious, really hard.
0:10:23.058,0:10:27.210
We have to think about learning [br]differently, in order to do that.
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Well, we've got our development teams.
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Our development teams were raised[br]in the traditional educational system.
0:10:34.937,0:10:38.322
Their idea of education [br]and online learning is
0:10:38.322,0:10:41.860
create some videos, put them online.
0:10:41.860,0:10:47.236
Well, if we're iterating over a project,[br]the first version of the project,
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also known as [br]the minimally viable product,
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it's going to be pretty simple and it's [br]going to be something that you could do
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with fairly traditional methods.
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And your programmers and developers,[br]all other things being equal,
0:11:02.397,0:11:05.262
will fall back on the traditional methods
0:11:05.262,0:11:08.862
because they're not being challenged[br]with the minimal viable product.
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The end goal where you want to get to[br]is something really flexible and dynamic,
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but by the time you get [br]to stage five or so,
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they've built many, many [br]static structures,
0:11:22.548,0:11:26.370
because that's what it took to [br]the minimally viable product
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at each release, at each iteration.
0:11:29.843,0:11:32.454
So you have to start over.
0:11:32.454,0:11:36.059
And you start over and everybody agrees,
0:11:36.059,0:11:40.308
okay, the project is about something[br]a lot more flexible than that
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and you start developing again[br]and the same sort of problem happens
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because your developers and your designer
0:11:48.743,0:11:52.543
did not acquire that expertise [br]in the meantime.
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So they go back on what they already know.
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So there's a difficulty here.
0:11:56.954,0:12:03.221
In instructional design, we're attempting[br]to create an outcome
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that is not part of the skill set of the[br]people producing the product
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that results in the instructional design.
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Finally, learning objectives.
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This is the meta thing, right?
0:12:19.772,0:12:24.053
And I get this one all the time: we do[br]connectivist-style MOOCs,
0:12:24.053,0:12:28.228
the connectivist-style MOOC.[br]We say there is no curriculum.
0:12:28.228,0:12:32.099
It's not about acquiring a certain [br]predefined body of content,
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because we want to meet [br]participants' needs
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as they go through the course, and [br]these needs are different for every person
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and these needs change over time.
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And it should be up to the participant,[br]who ought to be the product owner,
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to define what success is and [br]define what the outcome should be.
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It's a moving target.
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Nobody who funds education [br]wants to deal with that. Nobody.
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Every last one of them wants to see[br]course completions, certificates,
0:13:10.178,0:13:13.651
competencies, curricular outcomes.
0:13:13.651,0:13:18.229
They want them defined ahead of time.[br]They want them approved
0:13:18.229,0:13:22.478
by the curriculum board or [br]the school board or whoever is in charge.
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All of this must be set ahead of time.
0:13:26.428,0:13:28.938
And then you're supposed to go[br]and be agile.
0:13:28.938,0:13:34.258
It is two very contradictory perspectives [br]at work here.
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It's not possible to do agile learning,[br]much less agile learning design
0:13:40.920,0:13:46.868
in an environment where the structures[br]and the outcomes are all predefined.
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That's meek, that's my short talk[br]and I thank you very much.
0:13:52.635,0:13:54.912
(applause)