I was thinking about the context for this, and I realized the
Speaker:perspective from cognitive science, from understanding how our brains work,
Speaker:uh, cognitive science was an integrative, uh, way
Speaker:to start pulling together different people thinking about thinking— philosophers,
Speaker:neuroscientists, uh, cognitive psychologists, anthropologists—
Speaker:more learning science emerged from that, similarly
Speaker:trying to pull in instructional design and, and educational psychologists
Speaker:and cognitive researchers. And that perspective
Speaker:isn't, I think, well known and used enough. And yet it gives us
Speaker:insight that's really powerful like that, the properties of media.
Speaker:And so that's the broader perspective I'd like to share is that this is coming
Speaker:from a way of thinking and looking at the
Speaker:world that gives us really useful handles. And I found it extremely
Speaker:useful. I have the ability to give people insights that
Speaker:they wouldn't have gotten in other ways just because of that understanding how
Speaker:our brains work, which I think is, increasingly going to be important because that's
Speaker:where things are going. We're going to find out what technology can do, what brains
Speaker:can do, and we need to understand that really well to figure out where we
Speaker:fit in this continually evolving world.
Speaker:Good morning, good evening, good afternoon, wherever you are and wherever you're watching from.
Speaker:We're revisiting an episode we recorded 2 years ago with Clark
Speaker:Quinn. When we recorded this episode, AI video
Speaker:tools weren't creating content in seconds. Today you can
Speaker:generate a video with a prompt. You can clone your voice. You can
Speaker:build an entire training series without ever even turning on your
Speaker:camera. Pretty amazing. Maybe. But it also
Speaker:makes this conversation even more important. Just because you can
Speaker:generate video in seconds doesn't mean video is always the right
Speaker:medium. And I say that as someone who loves video. I
Speaker:work at a company that builds tools for video. I
Speaker:believe deeply in its power. Video connects, it
Speaker:teaches, it builds trust in ways few mediums can.
Speaker:But it's not the only tool in the toolbox. Screenshots
Speaker:matter, images matter, diagrams matter. Sometimes a
Speaker:static visual communicates something faster and more
Speaker:clearly than a 5-minute video ever could. And today,
Speaker:with short-form video dominating feeds with reels and shorts and constant
Speaker:motion everywhere, The question isn't just, should I use
Speaker:video? It's what kind of media best supports learning?
Speaker:And even more specifically, what kind of video best supports
Speaker:understanding? And that's why this conversation with Clark
Speaker:Quinn feels even more relevant now than when we recorded
Speaker:it. Clark challenges us to think beyond format and into
Speaker:cognition, how our brains actually process information.
Speaker:Static versus dynamic, concept versus context,
Speaker:diagram versus animation versus video. In a
Speaker:world where creating content has never been easier, choosing the
Speaker:right medium has never been more important. So
Speaker:hopefully you'll listen with that lens, not just how do I make more
Speaker:video, but how do I help someone understand better?
Speaker:With that said, here's our episode with Clark Quinn from
Speaker:February of 2024. Uh, Clark, I, I, we always like to start
Speaker:the show with a kind of the practical approach and you know,
Speaker:you obviously you're not necessarily a media creator. I'm sure you've created
Speaker:media in throughout your career, but as you think about from a learning
Speaker:perspective, what's, what's a tip you would give to folks out
Speaker:there who want to use video? They want to use it for helping people to
Speaker:learn. Is there a tip that you would give them to help them to be
Speaker:maybe more successful or, uh, maybe have that hit the mark a little bit
Speaker:more? I guess my
Speaker:perspective is don't use video
Speaker:for video's sake, for making it more compelling or
Speaker:more interesting. What you should be using video for
Speaker:is to convey dynamic stories.
Speaker:Um, too often we use video when we don't have to, and it's a
Speaker:high bandwidth and high production cost, uh, effort in many
Speaker:times, in many cases.
Speaker:So, I would like to reserve using video for
Speaker:when it makes the most sense, not as a panacea and end-all.
Speaker:We'll talk today about the specific ways in which certain
Speaker:different media most opportunely support
Speaker:certain types of learning outcomes and cognitive outcomes,
Speaker:and then we can dig into, you know, How can you swap them in and
Speaker:out for variety and a variety of other things? Well, I, I
Speaker:appreciate that as someone who, uh, you know, I use a— I make a lot
Speaker:of videos. I work for a company that promotes tools that you make videos.
Speaker:I, I appreciate the advice though, because I do think there's, there's this balance there,
Speaker:kind of time, cost, effort, and always, I, you
Speaker:always got to ask, is it the right medium to deliver the
Speaker:message? So I appreciate it. No worries.
Speaker:And it's just our brains have evolved to, uh,
Speaker:collect certain types of information in certain ways and process it in certain
Speaker:ways. And we want to
Speaker:ideally match for that, particularly when we're, you know, trying to convey
Speaker:the most important message. There are, you know, video can
Speaker:capture us talking like I'm doing right now, and we can
Speaker:communicate thoughts and elegantly And, but
Speaker:too often we can overuse it. We can use it without
Speaker:controls. I just saw an example of this the other day where
Speaker:they were providing things and they didn't really give you pause and restart
Speaker:options. You could go back, play the whole thing, but
Speaker:it didn't automatically just say pause it because, you know, somebody's
Speaker:just come in the door or something. We need control over the media.
Speaker:But think about, Um, Ken Burns and the
Speaker:Civil War, uh, movie he made,
Speaker:it was a whole bunch of static images sequenced together.
Speaker:Those static images were what they had at the time, but they also communicated
Speaker:in powerful ways when he sequenced them together. We don't— we can
Speaker:communicate those stories in multiple different ways. We can use graphic
Speaker:novels, we can use narrative prose, we can use
Speaker:sequences of images linked together with audio or
Speaker:text, or we can use video. When does each make sense?
Speaker:That's the important issue for me. Yeah,
Speaker:I love that. And, you know, I mean, we, we often refer to Ken Burns,
Speaker:and he's such a master of doing those things, right? But those are not,
Speaker:uh, not outside the scope of anyone's capability. People can use imagery and they
Speaker:can tell stories, and that— so I love that. Um, and we could probably talk
Speaker:about just that alone for a long time, but I want to get into this
Speaker:idea of cognitive properties, because when you— when you— we—
Speaker:I connected with you and you said, hey, here's some things that we talk about
Speaker:this, and I'm No, um, but I think we need to do a
Speaker:little defining up front because my guess is most people listening to this
Speaker:are saying, cognitive properties? What
Speaker:does Clark mean? And so lead us down this
Speaker:path of like, what is this idea of cognitive properties
Speaker:and as it relates to, to media, right? I was
Speaker:actually thinking you were going to ask me to define the different types of media
Speaker:because people describe those differently. Oh yeah. So I actually
Speaker:want to start with that because it's at the front of my mind right now.
Speaker:What— I have left of one. Um, when you think of,
Speaker:uh, diagrams, and that was one of the things we talked about discussing,
Speaker:they communicate conceptual relationships via
Speaker:spatial relationships. So when you say
Speaker:up here is this and down here is this, and we have a linkage between
Speaker:them, and the other things are linked this other way.
Speaker:We are communicating information. That's not video, that's a
Speaker:static image. And two things, um, cognitive properties I want
Speaker:to separate out now are static versus dynamic.
Speaker:So there's information that exists, you know, the relationship between,
Speaker:um, roots and, and branches. There is
Speaker:dynamics that the roots feed up and grow the branches, but the static
Speaker:relationship is that, you know, the roots are the nourishing from the
Speaker:groundwater, whereas the branches are exporting the leaves, which get energy
Speaker:from the sun. And together they put those together.
Speaker:Then we have the more dynamic story of an environment
Speaker:where, you know, the, the water cycle, uh,
Speaker:evaporation, condensation, precipitation,
Speaker:and whatever the word is for where it
Speaker:flows down the hill and gets up in the, in the body of water to
Speaker:evaporate again. We have that. Cycle. That's dynamic.
Speaker:And sometimes we need to communicate one, and sometimes we need to
Speaker:communicate the other. When do— so
Speaker:I like to distinguish between diagrams and
Speaker:animations. And when I say animation, many people think about, you know,
Speaker:cartoons moving around. I'm thinking specifically of animating a
Speaker:diagram. Mm-hmm. And then we have
Speaker:photos which capture context. And
Speaker:videos which capture dynamic context. Then we
Speaker:have text, which captures, uh,
Speaker:prose, you know, is a narrative, and then we have audio, which is also
Speaker:a narrative, and each of those are different.
Speaker:Diagrams and animations capture the conceptual.
Speaker:They're not tied to real context, they're an abstraction,
Speaker:whereas videos and images capture the actual
Speaker:context. So you can see behind me what my room looks
Speaker:like because it's actual context.
Speaker:We could just have an abstraction— I mean, a cartoon with a blank background
Speaker:or some arbitrary abstract background which could communicate something
Speaker:different. There, what I begin to talk about the
Speaker:cognitive properties, and when you want to communicate
Speaker:context, a photo or a video makes sense.
Speaker:But when you want to communicate a concept, you may be better off with a
Speaker:diagram or an animation. —and when you want to communicate
Speaker:narrative, you may want to tell a story. You can— now, the
Speaker:point I mentioned earlier about, you know, having still photos together become
Speaker:a, an, a story, um, video can be used
Speaker:to communicate narratives and is— why do we watch movies and
Speaker:TV series? But we're showing the context
Speaker:as well, and we don't have to infer the concept.
Speaker:Unless we were laying it over. So, from
Speaker:a learning perspective, the cognitive properties we're talking about are: we
Speaker:communicating concept or context? Are we
Speaker:communicating it dynamically or statically?
Speaker:Relationships? Those are the things— the cognitive properties I'm
Speaker:talking about. And then we need to start thinking about which
Speaker:we need to communicate and what media makes the most sense. And then, of
Speaker:course, we then think about And then how do we mix it up so it's
Speaker:not completely dull and boring the whole time?
Speaker:Well, okay, so there's, there's a lot here and, and those are—
Speaker:I think we're, you know, you're doing a great job at simplifying what is
Speaker:a very complex kind of concept in terms of,
Speaker:you know, there's these properties, these media, this media, these types of media that are
Speaker:good at typically doing. So if I, if I'm at
Speaker:the, the, you know, I'm the instructional designer or I'm thinking about
Speaker:creating media for, for learning,
Speaker:I'm hearing what you're saying. And so now I'm thinking like, okay,
Speaker:what are maybe the questions or decisions that are going to
Speaker:help me down that path? Because like you said, I— if I'm always using a
Speaker:diagram— diagrams are great, they do a great job with the thing. But if I'm
Speaker:always trying to use a diagram, it feels like, like you said, the— you
Speaker:get fatigue. Like, I— we actually struggle with this in video, right? If
Speaker:I see— put a video up online and it looks the same as every other
Speaker:video, people say, I've already watched that video. Or,
Speaker:you know, so I'm curious from your perspective because there's the, the
Speaker:practical application here going from this like understanding of these cognitive
Speaker:properties to now I've gotta, I gotta make stuff. Like
Speaker:a lot of our, our, a lot of our roles is as instructional designers, particularly
Speaker:if you're doing, uh, really good in-depth design is say
Speaker:understanding those things, but then Now it's like, okay, what do I do with it?
Speaker:So what, what would you say? How do we translate this to— what,
Speaker:what can someone do now if they understand these things?
Speaker:Well, two different takes on that.
Speaker:So let's talk about the traditional instructional experience first. You
Speaker:should be presenting an underlying model. Cognitively, models
Speaker:give us good basis for, uh, comparing our performance to
Speaker:what the model predicts. It gives us a basis to make decisions You know,
Speaker:models help us explain what happened, uh, or predict
Speaker:what will happen. And then we can say, if I did X, the model says
Speaker:this would occur, and if I do Y, the model says that will occur, and
Speaker:this is better than that, so I'll do this. The model tells us that.
Speaker:So we want to communicate a model, and the diagram makes sense, but then we
Speaker:want to show how that plays out in context. We have evidence,
Speaker:research-based evidence from cognitive load theory and the like, that
Speaker:showing examples before we give people opportunity to practice
Speaker:makes it easier to then take it on yourself. You
Speaker:see and abstract a few examples and it gives you some guidance.
Speaker:Examples need context. They show how the model
Speaker:plays out in the real world. So suddenly we're talking about watching a video or
Speaker:seeing a static image or a sequence of images telling a story.
Speaker:Examples work best 'cause they really are stories that show,
Speaker:I faced this problem, I applied this model, and this was the outcome.
Speaker:That's a story, that's a narrative, and we could use video
Speaker:or, or st— sequence of static images to convey that.
Speaker:Then we need practice. We need to immerse the learner into
Speaker:an environment and give them opportunity to make choices. Interactivity is something
Speaker:I haven't mentioned in terms of the cognitive properties here. This is
Speaker:more for the media instead of the interactivity, but then we need to allow the
Speaker:learner to make choices and see the consequences of those.
Speaker:So suddenly we're switching again to— and we might— one
Speaker:of the things I didn't talk about in my elicitation of the types of media,
Speaker:I talked about, you know, video and our,
Speaker:you know, context with photos or video. And I talked about concepts with diagrams or
Speaker:animation. I talked about narrative with prose or audio, but I didn't
Speaker:talk about graphic novel formats and comics and those
Speaker:types of things where they're semi-conceptual and semi-contextually
Speaker:because they strip away some of the details of context.
Speaker:And yet provide enough that the learner can recognize the context, but that
Speaker:allows the opportunity to layer the concepts on top of it as well.
Speaker:And so we might mix this up. We might have a graphic novel
Speaker:format of an example and a video for an example, and then we put the
Speaker:learner, and it might be photorealistic, or we might start with a graphic novel. So
Speaker:we're mixing up the media to tell the story. Now, I said
Speaker:sort of two different pedagogies. One was sort of the traditional, you have a model,
Speaker:example, practice. The other one is you put the learner in the situation.
Speaker:This is more a problem-based type of approach where you specifically
Speaker:chosen an important problem and you provide scaffolding. You've simplified it in
Speaker:certain ways early on, and later on they take on more capability.
Speaker:But we might make resources available in the environment so you can
Speaker:pull up a diagram or you can pull up a little
Speaker:example. We might embed that in the story. So there—
Speaker:the environment in which you're performing in might have a library
Speaker:of, that has the diagrams, and it might have
Speaker:a history of case studies that the organization has done in the past that
Speaker:you pull up that are really examples. So we are mixing
Speaker:up media to meet different needs because for
Speaker:learning purposes, we have different cognitive roles at different points in the
Speaker:experience. So we avoid boredom in that sense, but
Speaker:then we should be thinking about how are we making sure we're communicating each at
Speaker:the right point in time.
Speaker:Wow. Uh, you know, what I'm thinking about is, uh, so I've noticed this trend
Speaker:and, and, you know, obviously we can talk about instructional designers, corporate learning all, all
Speaker:day long. I've noticed in, in the world of non-instructional
Speaker:designers, there's a lot of people out there making training content.
Speaker:It's, you know, we would, we would probably balk at it a little bit what
Speaker:it is and, you know, but they're on YouTube, they're YouTube creators, they're
Speaker:teaching, uh, cooking or fix a car.
Speaker:But what I— in that first, particularly in that model, right, where you've got, uh,
Speaker:you know, you got— you're gonna put these things together, right? Model, example,
Speaker:practice. What I've noticed that they're really good at on YouTube, if they're doing
Speaker:well on the channel— so not everybody's good at it, but you know, the ones
Speaker:that are really good, they, they, they hook you with
Speaker:that. Here's the problem, right? They somehow draw you in, but
Speaker:then they, in a lot of ways, they're essentially doing this, right? They're modeling something.
Speaker:They're Showing the example, but it's not a linear boom, boom,
Speaker:boom. They— it's almost like a lot of loops because they're coming back to
Speaker:the, like, the thing. Here's the problem. Here's, here's something you could do that
Speaker:then the next thing. Um, and I'm
Speaker:curious if you thought about how you might like, because obviously you could say
Speaker:like, do these 3 things and that's all you ever do. Is it something that
Speaker:we should be looking at if we're creators? So we're creating instructional
Speaker:content. To like build this into, you know,
Speaker:almost templates that we could then repurpose? Or is that
Speaker:too structured and it's like everything is going to just— because a lot of times
Speaker:it's like, well, it's so specific, it's going to just be different every time. But
Speaker:are there kind of general frameworks that you, you've built out or you think we
Speaker:could build out from, from these kind of this
Speaker:approach? Um, there are templates that, you know, there are
Speaker:structures for what good instructional design is. Saying, giving the model, then
Speaker:give examples, then give practices emerged from empirical
Speaker:research, and that serves as a good template. We want to avoid too
Speaker:much templatization. I remember a company, uh, many years
Speaker:ago was following David Merrill's dick tips, and they created this
Speaker:very rigorous system that you talked about the type of objective you had, and then
Speaker:it limited the types of things you could do all the way through. And it
Speaker:made really rigorously accurate instruction, and
Speaker:you'd rather pull your eyes out than actually go through
Speaker:it, or That was unpleasant.
Speaker:So, um, but you have to be careful because some of the—
Speaker:you know, I repaired my dryer with a video from YouTube. I have
Speaker:no idea what I had. It wasn't a learning experience, it was performance
Speaker:support. It led me through the steps and diagnostic and figure out what to
Speaker:do. And then— but I didn't— I haven't had to do that again for years
Speaker:and years. It would have been silly for me to learn anything from it. It
Speaker:was just perfectly propor— sport. And
Speaker:you pointed out a bit of a, a
Speaker:evolutionary selection process going on, that the good
Speaker:videos are the ones that get viewpoints because there are people who naturally
Speaker:draw upon some of these principles, um, and, you know,
Speaker:that iterative cycle you were talking about. They're showing this step and talking
Speaker:about what leads to it, and in their narrative they talk a little bit about
Speaker:the models that gave them the guidance. And Andrew
Speaker:Schoenfeld at Berkeley did some of the greatest stuff of
Speaker:talk— actually going down the way and talking about the thinking
Speaker:behind each step, which experts often don't have
Speaker:access to. Um, cognitively, the research at the University of Southern California's
Speaker:Cognitive Technology Group by people like Richard Clark showed that 70% of what
Speaker:experts do, they don't have conscious access to, which is really
Speaker:problematic for instructional design because you've got these experts doing things and they don't even
Speaker:know what they're doing. They can tell you what they but they struggle to
Speaker:tell you what they do and you really have to work hard to pull it
Speaker:out. These people, somehow, the best YouTube
Speaker:providers are managing to articulate the underlying thinking and then showing
Speaker:how it plays out in context, step by step by step through
Speaker:a process. And you may learn something from it if it is something you
Speaker:do frequently and you go back and view it several times each time until you've
Speaker:sort of internalized it.. But we have to think
Speaker:a lot about what is the context, what is the need, how frequently— when
Speaker:you look at the principles of, you
Speaker:know, designing instruction, the criteria that determine how much practice you need and
Speaker:how much articulation tend to be, it's how inherently complex is it, how frequently
Speaker:you perform it in the real world, um, how important is it
Speaker:if, if you get it wrong. That will determine a lot of
Speaker:these factors that are sort of not
Speaker:articulated explicitly in these YouTube videos and the selection between them, but
Speaker:end up playing a big role in whether you're talking about performance sport
Speaker:or act— you know, are you happy leaving the information in the world? Did
Speaker:you absolutely have to put something in the head? And if so, what and
Speaker:how? Well, I, I appreciate that distinction because I think it is
Speaker:one that, uh, and it's not as nuanced, but it becomes kind of— is this
Speaker:learning? Is this performance support? And there is a lot of things that
Speaker:are just performance support, right? Just show me how to do it. Don't— I don't
Speaker:have to, I don't have to know it. I don't have to, you know, draw
Speaker:on that knowledge at a later point or build necessarily build
Speaker:from that, that framework to understand this other framework. Um,
Speaker:so I think I want to call that out because I do think that
Speaker:is a really insightful point. And I, and I, I know
Speaker:the difference, but like hearing you say it's like, oh yeah. Duh, a lot of
Speaker:this is not instruction. It's, it's really that. So,
Speaker:um, I'm, I'm curious because we've covered— I feel like we've covered a lot, but
Speaker:what else are we missing, or what else do we need to know to, again,
Speaker:to kind of keep us moving forward here with this understanding of the,
Speaker:you know, cognitive properties of, of, of using these things in
Speaker:a way, uh, because I, I do think we sometimes get into
Speaker:this cycle of it, particularly instructional design world where it's, you know,
Speaker:there's an academic field for a reason. And it's— academics are good, I think,
Speaker:and we need those, we need that work, that research.
Speaker:But oftentimes then, uh, you know, just in even my own experience, I'll be reading
Speaker:a paper and saying, okay, these are good things, and I— the application of it
Speaker:is like, well, I don't know, it doesn't maybe try to make the bridge
Speaker:the gap to like what I actually can do, or how would— how I do
Speaker:it, or even how my audience responds comparatively to
Speaker:the, the the study, you know, the body of the study of the people that
Speaker:went through it. So is there other things we need to understand
Speaker:as about cognitive properties?
Speaker:Yes. So I, um, suggest that, uh, really
Speaker:learning science is, is rocket science. So the brain is
Speaker:arguably the most complex thing in the known universe, and
Speaker:trying to systematically get changes in it by, you know, you know, sort
Speaker:of random perturbations is not the way to do it. We have The
Speaker:research you're pointing to, we have very good prescriptions in general
Speaker:that have teased out the importance of practice and the importance of
Speaker:deliberate practice and spacing of practice and a whole bunch of nuances. But
Speaker:putting it together for any specific circumstance that you're
Speaker:designing to support, there will— won't be one study that tells you how
Speaker:you should do that. What you're doing is putting
Speaker:together different aspects. Which is why, by the way, you're starting to see also
Speaker:a move towards more iterative approaches. Um, so
Speaker:you need to create your best first guess, but then you should test it
Speaker:and say, oh, this part's working, that part's not, let's tune it
Speaker:a little bit. Okay, it's working better, let's
Speaker:do it, you know, but fine-tuning this thing, look, it's doing
Speaker:it. And you look at Michael Allen's SAM, Successive Approximation
Speaker:Model, or the Megan Torrance's LAMA,
Speaker:lot like agile management approaches. They're
Speaker:moving to more create a first draft. Even David Merrill
Speaker:has moved from, uh, bone splay theory to ID2. Now his Pebble in a Pond
Speaker:is very much, you know, focus on the core practice first,
Speaker:get that right, to— testing and tuning, and then add
Speaker:other stuff around. So, you know, the point I'm trying to
Speaker:make is that research gives us good prescriptions. We need to apply it
Speaker:in a creative way. Focus on engagement as well without violating
Speaker:the principles, and then test it and tune it to see
Speaker:what's happening. Um, because we're not like concrete, we don't
Speaker:have totally predictable properties. Our brains can even change, you know, a little
Speaker:bit of the Heisenberg uncertainty principle, right? Uh, when
Speaker:you're observing people doing things, it changes their understanding of what
Speaker:they can do. Many people have created— built technology solutions and tested
Speaker:it and found that the people go, oh, well, now that I can see this,
Speaker:I want you to also do this and get rid of that. I don't need
Speaker:that now that you can do It's like, whoa, this is
Speaker:a dynamic process. That's cool, but it does
Speaker:require paying attention. Yeah, I, I feel like the, the pushback
Speaker:that then comes— because I, I completely agree, and I can remember being
Speaker:in my master's program, you know, working a lot of theory, a
Speaker:lot of study of, of different models for learning and things like that. And of
Speaker:course, uh, you know, one of the— we had a journal we had to keep
Speaker:and we'd write ideas, and so Very— this great process, but I
Speaker:remember trying to create my own models, thinking, how am I gonna create my own
Speaker:models? You know, but I, I remember one thing that is, is common is that
Speaker:kind of that iteration, right? That there is, there
Speaker:is no real learning process without like getting better
Speaker:at developing without iteration. And I think I wanna draw back to the, the conversation
Speaker:with the creators as well, because I think that's where they get us. They're really
Speaker:good at this. They, they are testing stuff all the time. Whereas I think in
Speaker:a corporate setting particularly, or even maybe in an educational setting,
Speaker:it's really hard to do that. And I know just from my own experience, if
Speaker:I have to make a video or some kind of piece of media
Speaker:that's gonna go out, the, the, the cycle time for me to
Speaker:come back to iterate on that is probably
Speaker:not very quick. It might be a year, it might be 2
Speaker:years. And so, you know, from a practicality standpoint, What advice would
Speaker:you give to folks who are saying like, yeah, I love this idea of iterating,
Speaker:but I can't iterate that fast because all— there's,
Speaker:you know, 400 courses that they want. There's these pressures, that
Speaker:pressure, you know, it's just the reality of, of the work is that these
Speaker:things take time, cost money, things like that. So I'm not expecting
Speaker:like for you to have a silver bullet because I don't think there is one,
Speaker:but I'm curious, what, what advice do you give to folks like
Speaker:in that situation? I, I give a varied forms of
Speaker:advice. The, the problem is, is we put ourselves in this position or allowed
Speaker:ourselves to be put in this position where this expectation where if
Speaker:we give you PowerPoints and PDFs, you can pop it in this program and turn
Speaker:it out on the web with a quiz and we're done. They have
Speaker:unrealistic expectations of what learning is. They have unrealistic expectations of what the
Speaker:process needs to be. And they have unrealistic expectations of what
Speaker:learning can do. If we give people information, they'll change their behavior and
Speaker:we're done, right? Which empirically isn't true.
Speaker:We're not formological beings. Otherwise, if we get— got new information, we change our
Speaker:behavior, but we don't. It takes practice. It takes a lot of development.
Speaker:It takes getting rid of old things. We don't unlearn them. We
Speaker:learn over them. Uh, sorry, can't resist addressing a myth along
Speaker:the way, but
Speaker:we need to Uh, change the perception, and that's going to
Speaker:be hard. So I've told people, you know, do a little
Speaker:bit of— it's easier to get forgiveness than permission.
Speaker:Focus most on making more meaningful practice. Just make
Speaker:a better written multiple choice question that's
Speaker:just a scenario, mini scenario, where there's a situation they
Speaker:have to make decisions instead of asking them to respond
Speaker:to pull out new information. We actually
Speaker:have evidence that, um, just pulling out information doesn't lead to behavior, but
Speaker:actually making decisions. You don't even need— there was always this belief you needed
Speaker:to make sure you knew the information before you applied it. It turns
Speaker:out that requiring people just to make the decisions requires them to pull that
Speaker:information out of memory and supports the learning as well. So you only need
Speaker:the high-level questions. So it's, it's a dual
Speaker:our, our multiple front attack. We need to change people's
Speaker:expectations, help them understand what learning is better, why we need to put less in
Speaker:the head and more in the world when we can. That's a much more effective
Speaker:solution. And we need
Speaker:to be subversively, um, creating, uh, learning that's more
Speaker:effective within the constraints we work in, but also start
Speaker:measuring and showing that by making these changes, we're making a bigger impact. I
Speaker:know we resist evaluation a
Speaker:lot, and yet it's going to be the key towards
Speaker:moving ourselves forwards. Well, I, I've got a quote for my, for my day: less
Speaker:in the head, more in the world. I love that. That is,
Speaker:uh, that is— that's, that's, that's a great statement. So, uh, no,
Speaker:thank you for that advice. And I think that, uh, what I
Speaker:think we'll, we're gonna— we'll end our formal conversation on that. I want to get
Speaker:to speed round here in a second, but I just want to say that I
Speaker:love that, right? That there's this process that we've got it, we've got to just—
Speaker:you got to do it, ask for forgiveness and otherwise we'll never move forward and
Speaker:we keep— we'll keep delivering the same things. And I, I love that advice because
Speaker:I think it applies to this conversation. I think it applies to a lot of
Speaker:conversations I have around video and what's true about like how
Speaker:people are making video, what types of videos they're making. So, uh, Clark, thank
Speaker:you for that good, good piece of advice.
Speaker:I, Appreciate it. No worries. Okay, so we're gonna, we're gonna jump into speed round
Speaker:questions. If you're new to the show, these are quick, uh,
Speaker:fast answers to questions that we decide by rolling a dice. So we're gonna play
Speaker:our stinger and we'll see you in
Speaker:just a second. All right, Clark, here we go. We're gonna bring up our dice
Speaker:cam because that's right, we have a dice cam and we're gonna roll for— we
Speaker:got a 12-sided die, 12 different questions. And the first
Speaker:question is number 7. So here we go. Question
number 7 00:30:16
What's a hobby or interest you've always wanted to pursue but haven't
number 7 00:30:20
had a chance to as of yet?
number 7 00:30:25
Oh my goodness. Um, you have so much free time with all the things
number 7 00:30:29
that you're doing. Hey, um, hobby I've always wanted to do but
number 7 00:30:33
haven't had to— I don't know,
number 7 00:30:36
it might be, um, Uh, paddleboarding. Oh. Because I'm kind of old to
number 7 00:30:39
jump up on a surfboard anymore. Haven't done that in a while. And I'm thinking
number 7 00:30:43
maybe moving to a paddleboard would be a good
number 7 00:30:47
way to keep the ability to go out in the ocean and ride without having
number 7 00:30:50
to paddle and jump to my legs anymore. But I haven't had a chance to
number 7 00:30:53
really give that a go. Yeah, that's— it sounds super fun. Got a
number 7 00:30:57
friend that does it on Lake Michigan and she, she absolutely loves it. She'll
number 7 00:31:01
go out though sometimes. She actually tries to surf in Lake Michigan. Last time I
number 7 00:31:05
knew it was like October, November, and
number 7 00:31:09
it was cold. So— very cold. But they do get some waves there. So they
number 7 00:31:12
absolutely do. So, all right, let's go back to our dice cam. Here
number 7 00:31:16
we go. Second, second roll. And the dot is at the bottom, so we know
number 7 00:31:20
that's a 6. I'm teaching people dice— what it means, how to read the dice.
number 7 00:31:24
So number 6, uh, share a piece of advice
number 7 00:31:27
that you've received that has had a lasting
number 7 00:31:33
impact on you. I'm impervious to advice.
number 7 00:31:40
I just do it. Uh, I guess it's to—
number 7 00:31:44
I try really hard at this and I'm not good enough at this, but this
number 7 00:31:46
is, I believe, really important and lasting advice
number 7 00:31:50
is to talk less, listen more, ask
number 7 00:31:54
more questions. Sure, I care about
number 7 00:31:57
learning. I just sometimes get so tied up in my head that I forget to
number 7 00:32:01
stop and go, wait, let's check the context. So that would be my—
number 7 00:32:04
the advice that's persisted with me, although it's more a case of do as
number 7 00:32:08
I say, not as I do. I love it. It's another, it's
number 7 00:32:12
another great, great piece of advice because it is easy, especially
number 7 00:32:15
when you're— your expertise is in an area, it's easy to,
number 7 00:32:19
to run. All right, let's do one more here. So
number 7 00:32:24
dice towers up. And we're going to go to question 4. So your last
number 7 00:32:27
speed round question. Ooh, this is a fun one. What's a
number 7 00:32:31
guilty pleasure song or movie that you secretly
number 7 00:32:34
love? Is there something that you, you love
number 7 00:32:38
music-wise or movie-wise that maybe we wouldn't think about? Oh,
number 7 00:32:42
movie— rennity. I love the TV show Firefly. It was a
number 7 00:32:46
mashup of West and sci-fi, and the movie is one of
number 7 00:32:49
the ones I keep on my iPad to watch if I have a long flight,
number 7 00:32:52
which I haven't had in a long time. And now they have movies Sprout's easily
number 7 00:32:56
available on planes, but it's just, to me,
number 7 00:33:00
fun. Uh, it's not high cinema, um, but I love the
number 7 00:33:04
message. I love the story. I love the, the humor.
number 7 00:33:07
I just— it's fun. It's my guilty pleasure. Perfect. I love
number 7 00:33:11
that answer. Great answer. Well, Clark, it's always a pleasure to
number 7 00:33:15
talk with you and, and, and learn from you. I mean, I've, I've
number 7 00:33:19
enjoyed many, many sessions sitting in your session, just picking up tidbits
number 7 00:33:23
and ideas and being— having my own concepts challenged. So if
number 7 00:33:27
someone else wants to learn from you, connect with you, where should they look? Where—
number 7 00:33:30
what would you point us to? Um, I'll, uh,
number 7 00:33:33
point you to quinnovation.com, which is fortunately under my name there
number 7 00:33:37
on the— in the video. Um, and I think
number 7 00:33:41
out loud, as you mentioned, at learnlets.com. That's
number 7 00:33:45
my blog. And, um, I try and— I've now pretty
number 7 00:33:48
much devolved to posting once a week Tuesdays, uh,
number 7 00:33:52
there. And it's sort of my random thoughts, but it tends to be what I'm
number 7 00:33:55
involved in, what it's going— and sometimes it's more theoretical and
number 7 00:33:58
sometimes it's more pragmatic. But, um, those are the two
number 7 00:34:02
places that are best track me. I'm on LinkedIn as
number 7 00:34:06
well, um, so that I'm somewhat active there
number 7 00:34:09
in multiple forms of my activities. Perfect.
number 7 00:34:13
I definitely recommend people go out and follow you, find you, read your stuff. It's
number 7 00:34:17
always good. As we wrap up today's show, we always ask our guests Clark for
number 7 00:34:21
our fi— their final take. So Clark Quinn, what's
number 7 00:34:24
your final take? My final take is I was thinking about the context for
number 7 00:34:28
this and I realized the perspective from
number 7 00:34:32
cognitive science, from understanding how our brains work, uh, cognitive science
number 7 00:34:37
was an integrative, uh, way to start pulling together different people thinking
number 7 00:34:40
about thinking— philosophers, neuroscientists, uh,
number 7 00:34:44
cognitive psychologists, anthropologists— more Learning science
number 7 00:34:47
emerged from that, similarly trying to pull in instructional design
number 7 00:34:51
and, and educational psychologists and
number 7 00:34:55
cognitive researchers. And that perspective isn't, I think, well
number 7 00:34:58
known and used enough, and yet it gives us insight that's really powerful,
number 7 00:35:02
like that— the properties of media. And so that's the
number 7 00:35:06
broader perspective I'd like to share, is that this is
number 7 00:35:09
coming from a way of thinking and looking at the world that gives
number 7 00:35:13
us really useful handles. And I found it extremely useful. I have
number 7 00:35:17
the ability to give people insights that they wouldn't have gotten in
number 7 00:35:20
other ways just because of that understanding how our brains work, which
number 7 00:35:24
I think is increasingly going to be important because that's where things are going. We're
number 7 00:35:27
going to find out what technology can do, what brains can do, and we need
number 7 00:35:31
to understand that really well to figure out where we fit in this
number 7 00:35:36
continually evolving world. Love it, and excited to see what we continue to
number 7 00:35:40
learn because the brain, like I said, is— it is more complex
number 7 00:35:43
than rocket science, I'm pretty sure. But, uh, It's good stuff. So Clark, thank you
number 7 00:35:47
again for joining me on the Visual Lounge. A pleasure, Matt.
number 7 00:35:51
Thanks for having me. Absolutely. All right, everybody, you heard it.
number 7 00:35:54
Clark drops new content on Tuesdays. You can go read and
number 7 00:35:58
learn, become a better creator of
number 7 00:36:01
instruction, understand these processes so that you can develop training that has
number 7 00:36:05
better impact. You can create a better message. If you're not an instructional designer, you're
number 7 00:36:08
saying, oh my gosh, there's so much out there. Absolutely. There's— there's people who've
number 7 00:36:12
learned about this and you can apply it to your stuff too. So with that
number 7 00:36:15
said, you know, we love it if you like or subscribe to the show. Of
number 7 00:36:18
course you can leave comments and reviews that helps us to know what we can
number 7 00:36:20
do better. And if you've got suggestions, you can email us, got an email,
number 7 00:36:25
old school, thevisuallounge@techsmith.com. We're also now on TikTok, which is crazy. So
number 7 00:36:29
you can see some of the great quotes if you just want to follow us
number 7 00:36:31
over there as well, because we'll take these— this shows, get some of
number 7 00:36:35
the best quotes, put them up there. Uh, makes it easy to stay in touch
number 7 00:36:38
if you don't wanna watch all the entire show. With that said though, we
number 7 00:36:42
hope that you take the things that you're learning and apply it to your lives,
number 7 00:36:45
apply it to your practice, get better at what you're doing, and take some
number 7 00:36:48
time to level up every single day. Thanks everybody.