Engagement in Learning Design: In Conversation with Clark Quinn

CommLab Podcast with Clark Quinn

Clark Quinn 0:10
Good day.

Sherna Varayath 0:11
Good morning, Clark.

Clark Quinn 0:13
How are you?

Sherna Varayath 0:14
I'm doing well. How are you?

Clark Quinn 0:16
OK.
Are we better equipped this time?

Sherna Varayath 0:21
Yes.

Clark Quinn 0:23
Yeah, those flowers are getting in your hair.

Sherna Varayath 0:28
OK. And maybe change the different one?

Clark Quinn 0:31
Oh, no, no, no.
I'm just being silly.
But you were looking like you were fighting around and so.
OK, great.

Sherna Varayath 0:42
Yes. So I am ready and we are better equipped this time.
This is the first time some a technical issue we face.
It was really disappointing for us.

Clark Quinn 0:55
Yeah, I.
It's handling tech issues with grace is one of those skills that's just worth having.

Sherna Varayath 1:05
Yes, absolutely.
So yes, I'm ready whenever you would like to start.

Clark Quinn 1:13
And I'm ready whenever you'd like to start.

Sherna Varayath 1:15
Awesome.
OK, I will start in the next 5 seconds.

A big hello to our listeners.

Welcome back to the Elearning Champion pod, where we dive deep into strategies, trends and triumphs, shaping the world of digital learning.

Are you seeking to create impactful and engaging elearning experiences?

Do you want to stay ahead in this rapidly evolving landscape?

If so, you've come to the right place in today's episode. We're exploring engagement in learning design with none other than Doctor Clark.

Quinn, welcome Doctor Quinn.

We're thrilled to have you here.

Clark Quinn 2:00
An honor to be here with you. Thank you.

Sherna Varayath 2:04
Claquin is the executive director of QUINOATION board, advisor to Elevator 9 and Co, director of the Learning Development Accelerator. With more than four decades of experience at the cutting edge of learning, Doctor Quinn is an internationally known speaker, consultant and author of seven books. He combines a deep.

Knowledge of cognitive science and broad experience with technology.

Into strategic design solutions that achieve innovative yet practical outcomes for corporations.

Higher education not-for-profit and government organizations.

It is no surprise that we at Comm Labs, a big fan of it, is no surprise that we at Comm Labs are big fan of his work.

Clark Quinn 2:52
Thank you very much for that gracious introduction.

I will just sit here and crawl off. Thank you.

Sherna Varayath 3:00
No. So dear listeners, before we dive in, make sure you never miss an episode packed with valuable tips, inspiring stories and latest industry buzz by clicking that follow button.

All right, time to get started with incredible learning engagement.

So, Doctor Quinn, I'd like to start with what exactly is engagement.

Clark Quinn 3:23
Well.
In cognitive science, we actually recognize that there's more than just the cognition. We talk about three things, and the first one is the cognition, and that's the knowledge.

We have the things.

We know how to do.The second thing is affect who we are and that's largely been tied to personality. And I don't mean MB T I I don't mean a bunch of these other personality things.

The only one that's really psychometrically recognizes the Big 5 or ocean.

Now sort of modified to hexaco and it has its flaws as well, but that's considered relatively immutable, and the third area is what they call conation, which is our intent to learn.

Sherna Varayath 4:10
Right.

Clark Quinn 4:11
Our willingness to invest effort in whatever it is we're choosing to do and that in the case of learning that means you're willing to take the effort, do the you know.

Steps that are involved involved in the practice, and so that's what I like to mean by engagement is that you're both.

Sherna Varayath 4:26
Right.

Clark Quinn 4:35
You're cognitively and emotionally immersed in the experience, and we are typically used to addressing the cognitive side but not the other side. The cognitive side and I use emotions as a shorthand to refer to a bunch of aspects of that that really aren't emotions, but it's to separ.

Sherna Varayath 4:38
Right.

Clark Quinn 4:52
Away from the cognitive, if you.
'Cause conation is a term not many people know, so it's not.

Sherna Varayath 4:56
Right, right.

Clark Quinn 4:58
Click to see more. It's not video you know solves all problems.

It's not random knowledge test.

Those aren't actually truly engaging.

What is engaging is your curiosity and your recognition that this is worth it to you.

Sherna Varayath 5:11
Yes.

Clark Quinn 5:14
That's why we that's what I mean by engagement.

Sherna Varayath 5:18
Wow, OK.
Right, so why should we consider engagement so critically in learning design?

Clark Quinn 5:29
Well, that intent to learn that willingness to engage in it is critical to being successful. If you don't open up people emotionally to being ready for the learning, to being willing to invest, everything you do is gonna just. They may as well be coedted with Teflon. It's just not going to stick. So we actually know that when people are emotionally engaged. They learn better. And so the short answer is you get better outcomes.When you consider engagement as part of your learning design, and I think to me learning experience design which is sort of a new phrase, have been around a long time, to me is the elegant integration of the cognosite learning and the emotional side of learning and.

Sherna Varayath 5:59
Right.
Yes.

Clark Quinn 6:18
Understanding how they work together and leveraging that to create an experience can be truly transformational, not just instructional.

Sherna Varayath 6:28
Right, yes.
So how do we generate the initial motivation to participate?

Clark Quinn 6:38
Well.
We need to get people willing to engage.
What does that take?
I like to use a fishing metaphor, and I'm not a Fisher person, so I probably munch it up a bit.
But we need to initially hook them and then we will need to land them. But first to hook them.

Sherna Varayath 6:54
Right.

Clark Quinn 6:56
How do we do that?
And I suggest people have to have three things.
The first thing is they have to acknowledge that they need this, you know.

Sherna Varayath 7:07
Right.

Clark Quinn 7:07
This is something I really do need. Then the second aspect is we need to address. But I already know it if they think they already know it, we have a barrier to learning. This isn't always going to be the case, but in certain instances we can face that and we have to be prepared to address that. If our survey of the audience, our audience analysis tells us that we will indeed have to go in and help learners recognize that they.

Sherna Varayath 7:22
Right.

Clark Quinn 7:40
Don't know.
There's a third element we need as well, and they have to believe that this experience will change. That lack of knowledge or lack of skill, really.

Sherna Varayath 7:48
Right.

Clark Quinn 7:52
And to be fair, we have lost a wee bit of credibility when we're in the circumstance where people will pay their kids to click through required learning rather than actually, you know, doing it. We have a problem and so.

Sherna Varayath 8:05
Right.

Clark Quinn 8:10
We may have to work extra hard initially to regain that trust, but if we start applying this reliably and regularly, we can address that and we should. So we need to how do we get that initial, you know, idea? I suggest it's through the showing the consequences of having or not having the knowledge. So the positive consequence of having knowledge or negative consequence not having the knowledge.

Sherna Varayath 8:30
Right.

Clark Quinn 8:36
And you can do that humorously or dramatically. Now I have a bent to humorously show the consequences.

Sherna Varayath 8:39
Right.

Clark Quinn 8:42
Not having the knowledge that sort of black humor is me, but that's not appropriate for all audiences, and that's what should drive it. But what is gonna motivate them is dramatically or humorously, recognizing that. They will benefit from having this or they will be hurt by not having this.

Sherna Varayath 9:00
Right.
Interesting. The initial motivation requires delivering on the promise, right?
So how do we do that?

Clark Quinn 9:10
That's what I mean by landing and there's we really have to.
We have set up an expectation that we are going to create a situation where they will acquire these skills and so we have to deliver on that promise and that means we have to do a number of things. What we give them both in content and content is.

Sherna Varayath 9:24
Right.

Clark Quinn 9:35
Really a shorthand for a couple different things, but we have to. Make sure that that's relevant. They get that it's relevant and then we have to make sure that we are. That the practice they are doing these recognized as being those practicing the skills they know they need to know and it needs to be pitched at the right level of challenge.

Sherna Varayath 9:57
Right.

Clark Quinn 9:59
There's a bunch of nuances that go into it, but basically it's having appropriate practice. The minimal recognizable content and Progressing them through that experience in a way that they recognize leads to them to transformation.

Sherna Varayath 10:20
Right. So.
In the same line of thought, what makes meaningful practice?

Clark Quinn 10:27
So as I suggested, it's got to be at the right level of challenge. But the first thing is what they are doing.

Sherna Varayath 10:31
Right.

Clark Quinn 10:36
What they have to actually the choices they have to make have to reflect the decisions they will make afterwards and on my editorial soapbox, I will suggest that what will make a difference to the organizations your listeners need to have for their organization will be the ability to. Make better decisions. Knowing being able to recite facts. Doesn't lead to the ability to do. We have robust results that show that and so it's. Very rarely, that the billions of site packs is gonna make a difference to an organization. It's gonna be the ability to make decisions and to do that, you need to have people practice making those decisions. So that's what the the each practice should be and it can be, you know, the ideal practice is live mentored, you know live mentored performance.

Sherna Varayath 11:18
Right.

Clark Quinn 11:28
So you're doing things and getting feedback, but early on that can be problematic. Individual mentoring is expensive, doesn't scale well, and the concept of getting it wrong in life situations could be rather onerous.

Sherna Varayath 11:40
Hmm.

Clark Quinn 11:43
So instead we give create artificial situations simulations and we can even do that with. You know, we can do that with full engine driven simulation driven experiences like games.

Sherna Varayath 11:43
Tread.

Clark Quinn 11:55
We can do it just with branching scenarios. We can even do it with better written multiple choice questions.

Sherna Varayath 12:00
Right.

Clark Quinn 12:01
And if nothing else. I implore your learners to please start writing better multiple choice questions that are actually many scenarios that say you're in this situation. You have these three different choices of action. Which one do you do not? What is this situation? Not, you know, what does this look like?

Sherna Varayath 12:17
Right, right.

Clark Quinn 12:20
What are you going to do and when you have that even better at multiple choice questions can work. So you need to put him in a context and we have research again that shows that when people are actually performing in context, they learn better than I learn on abstract problems, which leads us to question why then in schools do we give kids abstract problems, but we?

Sherna Varayath 12:30
Right.

Clark Quinn 12:44
Not on an educational reform mission right now on this call.

Sherna Varayath 12:48
Right.

Clark Quinn 12:49
And then the decisions need to be pitched at the right level for where the learner is.

Sherna Varayath 12:54
Good day.

Clark Quinn 12:55
Early on, it should be relatively course discriminations. They're making later on. It should be finer discriminations and what really matters as well is the feedback they get that helps them recognize. That if they made a wrong choice, why was that the wrong choice? And by the way, most mistakes people make are not random. We have a little randomness in our architecture. It's evolutionarily adaptive, but we tend to make pattern mistakes, and you can see this in the in when you ask.

Sherna Varayath 13:24
Oh.

Clark Quinn 13:26
Yeah, when you ask your, you know. The supervisors of the learners and say, what is it? And they go, oh, they always make this mistake. They always that mistake as a learning designer. That's a wonderful piece of information.

Sherna Varayath 13:38
Right.

Clark Quinn 13:38
Because now you know the things to build into your learning situation to test to make sure they don't know it, or if they make that mistake to Alek tends to be from bringing in wrong models. So we need to. Make sure that again, we're having this is the right decisions at the right level of challenge. And set in context, they recognize they can be fantastic, you know, set in Wild West or outer space or whatever. But they have the decisions have to be recognizable to the learners as the ones like they're going to have to make.

Sherna Varayath 14:13
Right, correct. So we spoke about context now coming to content.
What makes the content meaningful?

Clark Quinn 14:23
So I mentioned models. We use mental models just to step back.
There's a problem when we just talk about content and in general, our industry does have a habit of talking about content that seems to think that that's anything. And from a learning perspective, we actually know that there's two critical types of pieces of content and understanding that's import.
And the first one are mental models. These are.
Explanatory stories of how the world works.
They are conceptual because they're they're abstract and they're causal and they have relationships between the elements that explain how the world works. And we use these because we can say if I do this, this happens. If I do that, that happens. This is better than that I'm going.

Sherna Varayath14:53
Right.

Clark Quinn 15:11
To do this, and you can't make those predictions without causal models.
So they provide a better basis for making decisions and we don't think about these enough.
And we should make sure that we have good models now.
They're conceptual and I said concrete situations are better for practice. This is true for models as well.
How do we make models comprehensible? The other part of content is examples and this is showing models in context.
I face this problem.
I applied this model.
It led to this solution.
It might be a bad model and a bad outcome, but you know if you have a risk of overgeneralization where people might apply the models beyond where they should, you will need to perhaps show negative examples to keep them from going too far.

Sherna Varayath15:47
Right.
Drag correct.

Clark Quinn 16:01
But you also want the spread of context they see in examples and practice together to support appropriate transfer to all the situations you need them to go to.
But examples are good stories, really, and they should be.
To be engaging, they should be good stories about what happened and they should be interesting stories. And we can do that. We may have to exaggerate, the stories were told. But your experts will hopefully tell you good stories about success.
They may struggle to tell you.
Stories about their failures.
They may not feel that safe.
Ideally, we make it safe, but the other thing is to have them tell stories about others failures, and they're more likely to do that so.

Sherna Varayath16:38
Ujay.

Clark Quinn 16:41
And when we do that, models and examples, the final element that's really important is to make that minimal use the minimal set of information to get them to succeed.

Sherna Varayath16:53
Right. Interesting.
So now that we spoke about making getting content content into place, what makes a more meaningful closing?

Clark Quinn 17:06
Right. We've opened the experience with that hook, right?
We made a promise.

Sherna Varayath17:10
Right.

Clark Quinn 17:10
There's several other cognitive things we're posting do with an opening as well. We're supposed to activate relevant knowledge so that although that hook that showing the consequences probably will do that anyways.
Want to make sure if they have expectations about the experience and you're going to violate them, you want to address that up front?
You don't want them confronting a a disconnect between the experience they are expecting and what they're having, because that'll interfere with the learning.
So if you're going to, you know, that's probably not a problem.
They probably know what to expect, although upfront initially, if you're going to be doing more challenging problems than they're expecting, you know we have this habit of asking random bits of knowledge. That's not good. So, but you know, we set this up.

Sherna Varayath17:48
Right.

Clark Quinn 17:51
We then we they go through the practice and at the end they've gone through an emotional trajectory and we tend to not we tend to not address that.
We ignore that and that's not good. So.

Sherna Varayath18:01
Right.

Clark Quinn 18:03
A good closing has to do the cognitive things.
'Cause it should show what you're now unable to do, where further directions are for you. It should show you you know how to go deeper if you really got curious about XY or Z and you couldn't cover it that much in the learning you wanna give them the.
Opportunity to dig more deep, but you also wanna close the emotional experience we've opened.
You wanna acknowledge their effort? They've spent time.

Sherna Varayath18:25
Right.

Clark Quinn 18:25
They may be you made mistakes on giggly.
You personalize this for them.
But then you let them know you know or celebrate that they have now accomplished something.
Thing I now remember. I suggest possibly even introducing to the community.
They're now a part of and we can cement their acknowledge.

Sherna Varayath18:41
Right.

Clark Quinn 18:46
Cement their experience with an acknowledgement that could be a ritual.
We can have them, you know.
In lots of famous types of interpersonal things, they'll have people walk across fire and it turns out it's not really dangerous, but it signifies that they've accomplished something, and even just have them step over a line to be to join.

Sherna Varayath18:57
Right.

Clark Quinn 19:04
There are lots of things you can do, so you just want to make sure that you close the experience instead just going OK.
Done. That's not enough.

Sherna Varayath19:14
Right, right.
Interesting and very important too.
So now that we looked at making a closing, what are the potential barriers to engagement?

Clark Quinn 19:26
Right. First of all, people have to care about this and be willing to invest the you need to make the case that it leads to better outcomes.

Sherna Varayath19:33
Right.

Clark Quinn 19:37
And so it's worth the investment granted.

Sherna Varayath19:37
Correct.

Clark Quinn 19:40
You know my long term story is it doesn't take a lot of extra time to do this, but it will at first I have to acknowledge that because it takes a while for.

Sherna Varayath19:46
Red.

Clark Quinn 19:51
The new way of doing things to become cemented in your own experience.
You're a learner in this instance as well.
But as you do, you're not really doing anything different than what you did before.

Sherna Varayath20:11
Right.

Clark Quinn 20:12
You're just paying more attention to certain nuances are important.
So it's not gonna take a longer time, but getting people to understand that this is a worthwhile investment for you to go through that speed bump of of initial slowdown before you get back into soon is gonna take some effort.

Sherna Varayath20:25
Right.

Clark Quinn 20:32
You have to know these elements. I mean, there's and it's funny.
Learning science is finally becoming aware there's more and more books on it.
But as I said, I think learning experience on an elegant integration of learning science with engagement.

Sherna Varayath20:42
Right.

Clark Quinn 20:47
And I look for what there is on engagement and I didn't find enough, which is why I wrote the book. Make it meaningful, which talks about all this, but whether you do it through that book or any other way, you have to know what the elements are and.
Then you have to, yeah.
So you need to be aware that this is important.
You need to actually get the commitment to do it, and then you need to make sure you're able to execute on it.

Sherna Varayath21:12
Interesting. So how can how can one get started on this?

Clark Quinn 21:18
Well, I think it's really important.
The famous concept is a forcing function, so if you need to remember to bring something to work. If you put it so that it is literally blocking your ability to open the front door to go outside to work, you're more likely to remember that, oh, I need to.
Bring this with me.
I think that's important in learning design as well, so you need to bake it into your practices so that it's just an automatic part of what's expected. You put it into your template. If you have storyboard, say you know have a space in your introduction where what is?

Sherna Varayath21:39
Right.
Right.

Clark Quinn 21:54
Our emotional hook in your practice.
How have you checked to make sure it's relevant? So building it in is makes it easier for this to become an automatic part of your practice, and that is an essential part of actually being able.
To do this successfully, reliably, repeatably, you need we work better.
Our brains are really good at pattern matching and meaning, making really bad, remembering little bits and pieces.

Sherna Varayath22:17
Right.

Clark Quinn 22:19
That's why we create tools like checklists and things, put it into your checklist.

Sherna Varayath22:23
Right.

Clark Quinn 22:24
Put it in your practices.
That will make it that much more. If you're listening now, you've already got the awareness of why this is important and what it is you just need to start making it part of what you do.
And it's the easier it is.

Sherna Varayath22:36
Right.

Clark Quinn 22:39
To automate that, the more likely it is to happen.

Sherna Varayath22:39
Wow.
Right. Interesting.
Yes. And that brings us to the end of our questions and another insightful episode of the Elearning Champion Podcast.
We've covered a lot today from cognitive load and engagement hacks and what could be the possible barriers and how our listeners can get started.
I hope everyone is walking away with some fresh ideas and actionable steps to elevate your elearning engagement.
Thank you so much for your valuable insights and stories, Doctor Quinn.

Clark Quinn 23:15
No worries.
Thank you so much for the opportunity to talk about this, which is clearly a passion of mine and it makes me emotional, right?
So I'll just close and say stay curious my friends.

Sherna Varayath23:29
Wow, yes. So stay curious. I learning champions remember becoming an elearning champion is a journey of continuous learning.
And if you found today's episode valuable, please do share this episode with someone who you think could benefit.
And find us on your favorite social media platforms.
We'd love to keep the conversation going.
Thank you so much for tuning in.
Until next time, happy learning.
Yes.
Yes.

Clark Quinn 23:58
This time you got it recorded.

Sherna Varayath24:00
Yes, yes, this we we really had to fight a little bit with our technical team banner. They give us the enterprise edition where recording is taken care of much more in the safer in a secure way.
So yes, this time it's recorded.

Clark Quinn 24:17
So you'll just trim the ends, and we're often we're good to go.

Sherna Varayath24:20
Yes, yes, great, yes.

Clark Quinn 24:21
Great. OK.
Thank you so much.

Sherna Varayath24:24
Thank you so much.
Yes, thank you so much, Doctor Queen.
Have a lovely day ahead.

Clark Quinn 24:29
Yeah. And you?
I hope you can now wind down and enjoy your evening.

Sherna Varayath 24:34
Yes, yes. OK.
Thank you so much.
Bye bye.

Clark Quinn 24:38
Bye bye.