The Flow of Skills

Anyone who is in charge of a training organization has to sweat out the flow of skills, looking at the four quadrants of expert, instructor, student, and practitioner, and the movement of idea and people between them.

Here are some of the flows (and click to enlarge the skills chart above):

• Instructors might learn from experts, format the information for students, who then become informed practitioners.
• Experts might mentor practitioners.
• Practitioners might get promoted to expert.
• Students might work to get into a class, and get credit for successfully completing it.
• Peer to peer communities might chew on problems and come to a solution.

There is the recently ramped up focus on eliminating or at least dramatically reducing the entire right side of the chart, the role of instructor and the role of student, while dramatically increasing the areas of overlap between expert and novice (middle left), such as peer-to-peer work and social networking, often labelled as informal learning. If a learning group wants to produce content quickly that is highly relevant, this seems like the most fruitful path.

The Role of Simulations

Given this, are simulations dead? Quite the opposite. We may be seeing the end of the big, ten-hour /two day simulations that required specialized, dedicated instructors and significant set up costs (such as The Manufacturing Game and other b-school programs). This is a real loss, as many of these types of programs had real, deep, measurable benefit. They allowed people the breathing room to challenge their own fundamental assumptions, something that is rare and critical.

The new model of simulations is as one-hour (or less), completely self-paced, web-delivered experiences. The can introduce critical concepts and still drive deep behavioral changes for entire communities, in a way that meets certification requirements and is externally measurable, providing they meet these five rules:

1. Line up with real life. The sims have to be familiar enough to match to real situations almost immediately. This requires a first person perspective.
2. Highly Interactive: They have to be rich experience, that are real-time, game-like, with rich feedback. This requires Flash and the use of often-mathematical, dynamic systems.
3. Easy to access: These sims have to be effortless to both access on the computer and access intellectually. People have to be able to understand them and grow with them. The sims themselves therefore have to pace, then lead.
4. Topical: The new pressure is for sims to have storylines and contexts that are easy to update, so that the users are getting information that feels current and fresh.
5. Tied to a community: Finally, even self-paced sims should have some links to an online, semi-private community. This allows people to ask questions and share war stories. Meanwhile, the training group should be monitoring those communities carefully to improve the sim.

I believe we will all miss the big simulation programs of the past. But the new opportunity is to accomplish more, while still supporting the role of practioner more than forcing people into the role of student.