Real-Time Business Case Method: Study What a Real Company is Doing. Right now. This Minute.

Since 1920, the basic case study method used first at Harvard Business School (HBS) and then by practically every business school on earth has changed little. Sure, they are putting them on tablets now, but otherwise the simple formula is 1. research something that happened, 2. write it up, 3. leave the key issues open for the students to analyze and interpret (even though the outcome is known to the case designer), and 4. hold a highly accountable class discussion about it. Often at the end, the outcome is revealed for comparison to the students prescriptions or predictions.  Nice. Tidy.  Print, repeat.

And print they did.  HBS alone has 17,000 case studies for sale!

But what if you took the whole concept up a notch?  What if the outcome was unknown because it simply hadn't happened yet?  Because the company was making the crucial decisions right now?  Today and tomorrow and throughout the course and, if the company survived, long after the students left the classroom.

And what if you had a front seat to the action? A reporter inside the company documenting what was happening week by week, interviewing executives and employees, and sending out updates once a week, including company documents, strategy, and financial forecasts?

And what if you could actually speak to the executives via video conference and ask them questions once a week?  And what if you were allowed to critique their business strategy using the same information they have available to them and provide recommendations for their consideration?

This is precisely the audacious experiment conceptualized and implemented by James Theroux at the Isenberg School of Management.  The results were phenomenal.  In the first implementation of this approach, 45% of  the students said they felt it was the most memorable or valuable course they had taken.

And was it good for the company?  Why would they air their dirty laundry in front of and answer questions from a bunch of students when they have urgent work to do and critical decisions to make?  Well, consider that the students identification of core weaknesses in the business model turned out to be accurate and their recommendations for action prophetic.

According to Theroux:

“Over time, and including [a] merger, the result has been to a large degree that [the students'] thoughts on positioning the company have come to fruition.”

Repeating this kind of success is difficult.  In a later iteration, a mere 25% of the students found it to be the most memorable or valuable course they had taken (I hate it when only a quarter of my students think my class was the best one ever!). The company in this case was slower moving, the technology field it was in was harder to understand, and the access to the leadership was, unexpectedly, more limited.

But the best things to do are way too often also the hardest things to do.  It is worth trying again and again to get a model like this right; to refine the selection criteria; to get the costs of engaging in the approach manageable (either by lowering execution costs or by scaling participation fees); to demonstrate benefits so compelling to both the company and the learning institution that the approach becomes accepted and routine and takes it place along side that other, once radical, approach that has been working since 1920.

Hats off to Dr. Theroux!

For more information on Real-Time Case Method, see:
Real-Time Case Method: Analysis of a Second Implementation. Theroux, James M.
Journal of Education for Business Jul/Aug 2009, Vol. 84 Issue 6, p367-373 7p; 2 Charts, 12 Graphs, 2009 

Adventure Learning: Real Time, Real People, Real Issues

Imagine teaching biology to a group of students in a typical classroom and beginning class this way:

And now we will chat with a scientist on an expedition in Greenland answering question we have about changes in the ecology due to warming climate trends.

Or imagine learning about sustainability while following a team of scientists and educators through Africa, speaking with local villagers about sustainable agricultural practices or the impact of globalization. These are both possible thanks to some incredibly forward thinking and fearless innovators at the University of Minnesota. They call this hybrid distance education approach, Adventure Learning.

To quote from their wikipedia article:

Adventure Learning (AL) ^[1] is a hybrid distance education approach...[that provides] students with opportunities to explore real-world issues through authentic learning experiences within collaborative learning environments, and is anchored in experiential and inquiry-based learning.^[2] The AL approach includes educational activities that work in conjunction with the authentic experiences of researchers in the field. For example, within an AL program, the curriculum, the travel experiences and observations of the researchers, and the online collaboration and interaction opportunities for participating learners are delivered synchronously so that learners are able to make connections between what is happening in the real world and their studies, and then reflect on those events and present potential solutions to issues that are raised.^[3]

The real world is happening 24/7 in every country on every continent on the planet. Why is it that when we enter a classroom setting, or even, unfortunately, when we enter most online courses, we shutter the windows as it were to the rest of the world. Why don't we invite that world in? Why don't we make the human connections that are possible now between what we are learning and the people that live those lessons every day?

Way back in the mid-90s, I ran an internet science camp for middle school kids. They were marginally engaged. Then one day we sent an invitation to an online group of scientists asking if they would chat with our class. To our great surprise, we had about 10 respond with an enthusiastic YES! I can still remember the day that our students were chatting live with scientists who were designing the Mars rovers or researching at Microsoft or DuPont. Our students were completely engaged, and everything we were trying to teach them about a future career in science was demonstrated in spades by these willing professionals reaching out to them with answers and advice.

How far can we take this approach? Imagine a language learning class following peers of the same age traveling through a country speaking the target language and engaging the target culture or just connecting with a class of local students. Imagine a science class connected to a team designing a solar car for the World Solar Challenge. Imagine an ancient history class following an excavation at Petra.

The possibilities are endless. Yes, it takes some extra effort. But, wow, isn't it worth it?

Johnny Depp Kills Disney Pirates

Having just returned from Disneyland, I have been thinking about the updated Pirates of the Caribbean ride that now features Johnny Depp as Captain Jack Sparrow. While Disney surely added Capt. Jack to the ride to update it and increase audience engagement, in discussing it with my wife, it became clear to us that the addition actually reduces the narrative power and, thus, the overall engagement and enjoyment of the ride.

Timelessness

What makes good narrative great is when it is imbued with a sense of timelessness. While stories like Huckleberry Finn or To Kill a Mockingbird have a definite time and place, they don’t feel bound to that particular time. The characters feel fresh and real every time you read them, and the settings feel like they could exist right now in some parallel universe coexistent to our own. Before the addition of Jack Sparrow, the ride had this feeling to it. The riders filled in the details of the narrative, imagining a back story and a conclusion, projecting the motivation of each character and their ultimate fate, placing the events in an imaginary, but plausible, history. With the addition of Sparrow, all that is taken away. The narrative is forced (rather ungracefully in its repetition) upon you. You are now watching a version of a blockbuster movie, and you know the back story and the ending because it has been thrust upon you. The narrative has been appropriated, and you must comply.

Rider as a Character

Even worse is the loss of the inclusion of the riders as characters in the story. In the original ride, you become a part of the story. You are warned at the beginning that you are entering into danger, you then view the “cursed treasure,” and are then told the following:

“No fear hath ye of evil curses, says you. Ah... Properly warned, ye be, says I. Who knows when that evil curse will strike the greedy beholders of this bewitched treasure.

Perhaps you/ye knows too much. You've seen the cursed treasure. You know where it be hidden! Now pass through at your own risk. These be the last friendly words you'll here!”

You are now cursed and must face your fate. That curse brings you right into the middle of a fierce battle with cannon balls whizzing overhead, then through a burning, groaning, crumbing building, and finally between the muskets of drunken, dueling pirates. Happily, you survive all of these and leave with your secret knowledge of the treasure and your lives. All this is taken away from you in the new version. You simply watch as other characters play out other stories. The boat is little more than a floating theater seat. Pass the popcorn.

Implications for Instruction

Seeing or hearing a narrative is a powerful means of engagement. Even more powerful is direct participation in the narrative by taking on a role and/or being asked directly or indirectly to project the conclusion. People like Stephen Covey teach using great narratives. But they keep those narratives for themselves because they provide all the pieces and trot them out in each training masterfully and verbatim like an actor on a stage. While this is so much better than PowerPoint bullets, it is not as powerful as sharing the narrative with the audience, giving them a real stake in its outcome, and even trusting them to write the ending.

Unforgetable Learning: What Master Storytellers Can Teach Us About Designing Transformative Learning Experiences

This post is the story of the dissertation I didn't write, the book I would like to edit to make up for it, and how you can help.

Have you ever been channel surfing and came across a documentary about a topic that, until this pivotal moment, was of mild interest and found yourself, within 10 minutes, fully engrossed in every aspect and detail of say, the life cycle of a shrew, the mating rituals of the common slug or the travails of a nomadic Mongolian family whose camel has rejected her calf? Do you find yourself telling your co-workers the next morning with great enthusiasm about the way computer chips are manufactured or how FedEx sorts packages or how sea turtles migrate thousands of miles to the exact same beach on which they were born to lay their eggs having never visited it again in the intervening decades?

My dissertation was going to be a deep study of the structure of the most engaging, memorable documentaries designed for a general audience. I wanted to extract principles of how to engage and enthrall learners who only have a passing interest in a subject. It seemed to me that our field could learn a lot from those outside the field who had mastered this craft. Alas, I couldn't muster enough interest among my faculty and had to move on to another topic.

Master storytellers design their narrative to completely invest their audiences in their story; and audiences willingly give their rapt attention and full emotional involvement in return. I want to know how that is accomplished by the best storytellers in (at least) the following genres:

• Documentaries
• Feature Films
• Television Series
  
• Plays
• Musicals
• Dance Performances
• Poetry
• Short Stories
• Novels
• Video Games
• Role Playing Games
• Theme Park Rides

I believe much could be learned from a minute by minute analysis of the structure of some exemplars, by interviewing their creators, by interviewing their loyal audiences (or eavesdropping on their public online discussions), and by carefully studying those who experience these for the first time. I also believe that the narrative traditions, folk wisdom, and design tools of the individual genres could be mined for insight. For example, I did a minute-by-minute analysis of the NOVA episode on the Wright Brothers and found very clear and compelling structures designed to draw in and hold audiences with different levels of familiarly and interest in the topic.

I would love to serve as editor or co-editor on such a book, with chapters written by you or people you know who would be ideal candidates. I would be interested to hear from those who would like to participate or who know people who would like to submit a chapter or could recommend a publisher that would find such a book particularly interesting. Actually, I would just plain like to know what you think of the idea.

What do you think?

The Hidden Park: Great Concept, Cool Technology, Careful Narrative Design

Imagine a portable learning toolbox with these capabilities:

• GPS
  
• A digital camera
• An accelerometer

Now bring to it a conceptual framework:

• Alternative reality gaming
• Geochaching
  

What are the possibilities? What if you added a bit of story, a bit of fantasy, and loads of imagination?

You or I probably still wouldn't come up with The Hidden Park, but, luckily for us, the people at Bulpadok did. Here is a brief description from their press kit:

The adventure begins when the children receive a video call from a troll named Trutton, head of the Magical Wildlife Protection Association. Trutton explains that their park is in danger of being bulldozed by greedy developers. The kids must collect evidence to prove the existence of magical animals in their park.

The children navigate their way through the park by following a map that lets them know where the magical creatures live. Of course, Trutton’s map is magical – as they move past landmarks in the park the map tells them where to go next. The children must solve puzzles and riddles on their way to the next destination. Clues to the answers can be found on the signposts in the park.

Following Trutton’s directions, the children take photos of various landmarks. As if by magic, Trutton’s fantastical friends appear in the photos – sometimes right next to the children! The photos are stored in a gallery, so at the end of the day the children have an album of their adventure.

Very, very cool. So: Great concept. Smart, innovative people thinking outside of the box. Nifty technology. Contemporary aesthetic look and feel. That's what it takes, right? But what role did narrative design play? Narrative is clearly an element, but did it matter? Did they just hit the jackpot of a serendipitous cross over of cool technologies and a neat concept and then threw in a fun story as the frosting on the cake?

Oh, no. Not even close.

If you go to the blog of the creators of the game and look up the post titled Shaping the Story, you will see that they took the narrative element very, very seriously. These cutting edge game designers discuss Aristotle's classic three act structure, the narrative arc, and several modern storytelling theorists. Narrative design, it appears, was a central consideration of their game design, and, I would venture, central to the success of the product. These people thought long and hard about what the right narrative structure for the product should be, and have some very interesting thoughts on the mapping of a story arc to physical geography. An excerpt:

One of the really fun things about writing The Hidden Park was being able to physically map the narrative shape over the landscape. Many of the pathways that we plotted actually physically drew an arc through space. While this was satisfying at some theoretical level, it also became important for storytelling. We didn’t want people to double back over territory they had already covered and we didn’t want people to cross back over their path. The Hidden Park is a simple linear narrative and it was important for that to be reflected geographically. We wanted to create the feeling of physically moving forward through the story.

As GPS gaming evolves, it may be desirable to maintain a consistency between the shape of the narrative and its position in real space. Where a detective story leads the protagonist around in circles, a GPS mystery may literally lead the player back to where they started. Often in a story, a writer wants to revisit a particular theme and reveal something new to their audience. By requiring a player to physically return to a location, their path will trace the intricate folds and layers of sophisticated storytelling.

They go on to say that this mapping of physical space to the storytelling structure is not a hard and fast rule. But my point is to call attention to their careful consideration to the narrative structure of the product. They did their theoretical homework, and it pays off in the final product. Without a strong narrative, the product would have been gadgety cool and amusing. With the narrative, it becomes a compelling adventure that leads the player forward, as they state, "with direction and purpose."

So if we revisit the list of key features from their website, there seems to be a hidden element that didn't make the list:

• GPS
  
• A digital camera
• An accelerometer
• Alternative reality gaming
• Geochaching

and...

• ???

Go ahead, snap a photo with your iPhone and see what shows up...

Special Issue of Interactive Learning Environments Focuses on Narrative

I was recently had an article published as part of the December issue of the Interactive Learning Environments entitled "Designing video narratives to contextualize content for ESL learners: a design process case study." The issue was focused exclusively upon narrative and interactive learning environments and guest edited by Paul Brna and Rose Luckin. Below is the abstract of my article:

In this paper we discuss how the Brigham Young University Technology Assisted Language Learning Group (BYU TALL Group) develops video-based dramatic narratives to increase the amount of context we provide to English as a second language (ESL) learners. First, we discuss the problem of decontextualization in education, the contextualism alternative, and how narrative can provide crucial context. Next, using ESL instruction as a case study, we compare non-narrative video-based language models with narrative models and discuss some of the potential benefits of narrative models. We then discuss issues to consider when using narrative models, and outline a narrative-focused design and development process with particular attention to those aspects critical to creating narratives that are simultaneously pedagogically sound, aesthetically credible, and engaging for learners to watch.

"Smoking is [wags finger] not allowed on any delta flight."

Like a lot of people, sometime in the last couple of years, I was sitting on a Delta flight, bouncing out to the runway, when the heretofore totally ignorable safety video came on. But this time, it was different. Jazzy music. I looked up. Zippy editing. I kept watching. Amplified, stylized sound effects. Catchy. Then came the moment where all other safety videos got classified as boring and lame -- the finger wag, which you just simply have to see for yourself.

I laughed out loud. On it went with slick graphics, interesting camera angles and focus pulls, and even a post-production twinkle and audible "ding" on the life preserver demonstrator's smile.

This Delta safety video, in my opinion, is a great example of putting the engagement back into instructional design. While there has been a lot of talk about the attractiveness of the main actress (for the record, she is not an actress but an actual Delta flight attendant) as the reason people watch, I think it is more than that. Yes, she is striking, and that does increase engagement, but it is the sum of all the little touches mentioned above that raise the overall engagement level. One of those strategies (sound effect, focus change, unusual camera angle, etc.) is used about once every ten seconds or so. They are sprinkled throughout to (pleasantly) surprise you in every part of the video. If you doubt that this video is substantially different that other airline safety videos in terms of engagement, show me another safety video with over 1.2 million voluntary views on YouTube.

Now, we must remember that the content of the video did not substantially change from the previous safety video. In most cases, the exact same wording is used. The exact same action. It is all about the presentation, the pacing, the music, the little touches that draw the audience in. These "touches" are not touches at all. They are engagement strategies and should not be considered optional afterthoughts to the overall design. We tend to use pejoratives to describe them: window dressing or eye candy or Easter eggs. We think of the designers as being mischievous or even frivolous, of messing around after the serious work was done, by adding them. But they are the difference between whether people choose to watch the video or not. For many travelers, I would submit, they are the deciding factor in whether or not people read, sleep, or otherwise ignore the safety video or watch it.

As long as instructional design models continue to be derived from research in settings in which the audience is required to participate, our models will continue to exclude these pivotal factors in determining whether or not there is an audience at all. And it is a mistake to think that just because you have a bunch of people trapped in a classroom, or a training site, or an airplane, that you have an audience.

"Engagement [wags finger] is not optional in effective instructional design."

Where is Emotion, Engagement, and Aesthetics in the Learning Sciences?

I am looking at the index to the The Cambridge Handbook of the Learning Sciences. I am surprised to find:

• No entry for "engagement"
  
• No entry for "aesthetics"
  
• Only 2 pages under "emotions," one of which refers to this passage:
  

  We need a better understanding of the intertwining of affective, relational, and communicative aspects of learning interactions. How do emotional responses mediate learning, and how do they emerge from learning? (p.29)

  Good question!
  

• Only 2 pages under "narratives"
  
• Under "motivation," which has 21 sub-headings and 55 page references, there are a handful of possibly relevant subheadings: "Attention and motivation," with 1 page listed, "boredom and motivation," with 2 pages listed, "deep level engagement and motivation," 1 page listed, "emotions and motivation," 1 page listed.
  

Could someone clue me into to what a learning scientist might call "emotions," aesthetics," "engagement," and "narrative"? Could the field really have attended so little to these issues? I realize that the Handbook is hardly the entire corpus of the field, but I guess I was hoping to find a bit more than I did.

Planning for Engagement in Instructional Design

Pat Parrish had an engagement plan for his course. It looked* something like this:


He thought that students would generally start with lower levels of engagement, that that engagement would grow as they learned new material and completed assignments, that it would plateau in the middle of the course, and then rise to a climax near the end of the course when the applications of their learning became more apparent to them. Pat measured the engagement of each student throughout the course. Each line represents one student's reported engagement on a per module basis. This* is what he found:



Wow. Try following any one path through the chart. Now compare it to any other path on the chart. Explain why the two paths are different. Good luck.

So what's the point? Two points.

First point: Pat is way ahead of the curve. Pat actually had an engagement plan. He actually thought about how each part of the course would engage learners and to what extent he thought it would. He actually implemented learning activities to reflect his plan. Have any of the rest of us really tried that? Do we have a plan for engaging students in any systematic way? Do we have picture of the ideal engagement arc of our course in our heads? Or are we just focused on achieving learning objectives (somehow) or, worse, content coverage, and hope/assume that engagement will happen? Or are we resigned to the sad fact that learners choose to be engaged or not engaged, period, not my problem? Is this how a screenwriter, a playwright, or a music composer would think about their audience? I believe that while learners do have a choice to engage, we also have a choice of deciding how seriously we are going to try to reach out to them in engaging ways. How determined of a suitor of meaningful student engagement are we going to be?

Second point: Pat's students were all over the map. And we have no idea why (though I imagine that Pat has some guesses). Most of us have students like Pat. I would bet valuable property that 95% of us would find a similar, random looking set of curves if we tried the same experiment in our courses. We have no idea why they are or aren't engaged. We have no idea why in module 7, one student who had been averaging between a 6 and a 4 dropped to a 2 when six other students posted increasing engagement scores for the same module. This is the sort of thing that I feel like we really, really need to know. We should be able to read these patterns, perhaps not easily or perfectly, but we should at least have a sense of why these things are happening.

If we want to engage learners, and I do, we had better start finding ways to create and understand charts like Pat's. We are at the starting point of this kind of research (to my knowledge, if I am wrong, please let me know). The point when everything looks like random chaos. But it isn't random. There is a reason for every bend up or down on those curves. Let's go find out what is going on so we can design in engagement into our learning experiences. Yes, the learners have to choose, but let's give them every reason to choose to engage.

*Graphics used by permission; taken from an AECT 2007 presentation. Update: looks like Pat put the paper on his website.

Real-time Measure of Learner Engagement

I want to conduct this study:

Twenty college students (or learners of your choice) are given a means and a prompt (and a reward) to answer the following two questions every five minutes for all of their waking hours over the course of a day/week:

1. What are you doing right now (if different than your previous answer to this question)?
2. How engaged do you feel right now on a scale from 1 (I am bored to tears! Save me!) to 5 (Shhh! Go away, I am busy!)?

This would allow us to formulate some baseline data to see where learning experiences fall in the overall spectrum of a learner's environment in terms of engagement. I am guessing that most of them fall into the bottom twentieth percentile, most of the time. If so, that can't be good. This kind of study could also be instrumental in identifying those exceptional learning experiences that are maxing out the scales. Think we might want to look at those particular experiences a little more closely?

Or imagine this variation: You are the instructor of a course. Each student has a little engagement meter, asking to rate engagement on a scale from one to five every five minutes during your class time. You videotape the class. You synchronize the video with the data. You chart engagement across time. Where you see peaks (hopefully) and valleys (inevitably) you jump to that part of the tape to see what was/wasn't going on. How much do you think you could improve your course after just one session of this? After three? Five? Do you have the courage to have the data reported to you in real-time while teaching the class? (Would that even be a good idea?)

If you know of anyone anywhere who is doing anything along these lines, please let me know. I am aware of classroom clickers, but not aware of anyone using them to measure engagement throughout class time to create an engagement graph. And I have never heard of anyone trying to establish an "engagement baseline" for learners that compares their learning experiences to the rest of the daily experiences in their life.

In closing, could you please rate your level of engagement with this blog post on a scale from one to five? ;)