Hey, Megan, let's do a podcast.

Great idea. What should we talk about?

Today? We are continuing the conversation about Learning, Science and experience, or lsx, with this concept you've been noodling about on and off for over a decade. A learner centric map of how capability develops over time and how learning professionals support that journey.

Yeah. And boy, you make it sound like I've really been deeply thinking about this

for 14 years, but,

Well, you know .

or 10 years or whatever.

I did, I did. And then I never really talked about it too much. And yet the other day I, I was having a conversation with another learning professional and she asked a question that really got me thinking about, oh, it's still relevant. So it's, it's. The concept is that learning.

Right.

And it's, it's part of the LSX principle. It's a, it's a journey, not an event. And it may be a journey with many events. So there's really this arc of a learning experience and it's very learner centric. It's not learning designer centric, it's not business process centric even necessarily, but it looks at how capability develops and deepens over time, and it recognizes that people move through different points around their awareness, their preposition, how they acquire new skills, how they apply new skills, what happens when something goes wrong, how do they refresh them and then how do they contribute back? So these points in time, some of them are enduring states like pre awareness or sustainment, and some of them are very situational, like I have to remember this now, but they really orient design decisions from our perspective around the learner's evolving experience, not just a single intervention. And before we get in here too deep, I really need to credit the work of Conrad Gottfredson and Bob Mosher in the five moments of learning need. And that's. You'll, you'll see pieces of those in here because I think they're very, very relevant.

I have a few more and I think. And we'll talk about these. There are a few more than those five core, and that's really how this discussion comes about.

Right. So I think the first kind of set of points in time that you have in mind are really before learning even starts. Right?

Yeah. In fact, before even someone knows there's something to learn. So if you think about like the Adkar change management Model where there's awareness and desire happen before you acquire knowledge. I'm really thinking around this pre awareness. You're bumbling along the road. You are unconsciously incompetent. You do not know that you need to learn or change or do something different. And that's an opportunity for us to identify, for us to do needs analysis, for us to help convey a need to learn.

And so I think there's, there's, there's work that needs to be done there and then there's preparation to learn. Right. How do I get ready to learn? That might be anything from building motivation, building context, my own psychological readiness to. I'm doing a pre learning conversation with my manager. Right. Just like Brinkerhoff's high impact learning model. Right. I'm, I'm, I'm having a pre conversation with my manager.

I may be doing pre work. Nobody does pre work. Nevermind. Just kidding, just kidding.

Some people do, you know, you do high achievers. High achievers like you occasionally. So then like after that kind of before learning point in time, there's, I think that's followed up by this more formal phase or point in learning.

Yes, yes. And there's two kind of really classical formal learning points here. And you'll recognize them in the Gottfredson and Moser work. Right. So one is the new, the initial acquisition of new skills. Right. My first exposure, whether it's orientation or welcome or introduction or 101. And then there's the more.

That's when I need to deepen and extend my learning. I'm expanding it. I'm going into more additional use cases. I'm getting better practice, higher skill levels. So often we think of those as formal learning opportunities. Certainly the initial acquisition, I might go to a course that's a great time for a long form course. Doesn't have to be super long, but that's a top down, organizationally driven or content driven. You know, here's what you need to do to do this job.

Right. But somebody else has decided that for you.

Right?

Right. And then the more can either be somebody else has decided what your more is or that may be a great opportunity for microlearning, moment of need, more

curiosity, informal learning, exploration maybe in that space. Yeah. I think about that new initial acquisition phase and I think that's what most people think of when they think about learning. Right. It's like, and that's what we did for 12 years of our youth is this like we're just learning new, learning new, learning new. Maybe some, some reiteration in that space as well as we're acquiring new, but then forgetting and needing to repractice it, we've covered the new and the more. What else comes after that? What happens when somebody's on the job then?

Yeah. Right. So that formal learning is structured and provided for you and then you get on the job and there's a few things. Right. So you have to remember to apply it in the first place. I don't know about you. I tend to go around the world and I'll be in the middle of a situation. It's like, oh, I wish I'd remembered I needed to do so and such.

Or maybe it's a habit I haven't formed yet. And so whether this is habit formation, cue triggering, whatever it takes to get somebody to remember to apply it, and then you get to this application moment, what Godfrey Send and Moser called the moment of apply.

Right.

When the pressure's on, I'm in real world conditions. I am absolutely doing it. Now, how do I get that support that I need, that learning that I need? But in that point, we call it performance support. Right. Whether it's a job aid, it could be a poster on the wall, it could be, you know, a performance support tool, a workflow learning tool, whatever. Right. So it's, it's right there supporting me in that moment. Kind of that coaching that by my elbow.

It can also happen. Doesn't have to be digital or, or solo. Right. It can be an instructor, a coach.

Right.

And then there's I, I still, it's still when you're doing the job, but something breaks down, you have to troubleshoot. Right. And this is when you've got to then do some figuring out. And that's an additional. If you think about Bloom's taxonomy or however we stack, the ways in which we learn that troubleshooting is different than just doing and remembering to do what I was told because it requires new skills.

Okay. So those are kind of like bottom up in a way. They're kind of in the workflow. But you have some more top down points too, right?

Yeah, yeah. So once I'm in the workflow, there are absolutely things that I am that start with me as a learner. But then there's some things that come organizationally, right. And structured from the top, that's a different direction. And so one is when something changes or adapts. Right. An intentional change on the part of the organization that could come from. As a team, we have all learned to do something better or something changes.

There's a new version of software, a new process company gets acquired and so things are different. Right? So something changes how we do a particular process or function in our work and then sustainment and renewal. Like how do we prevent skill decay? How do we make sure that we are every so often refreshing? That learning, recertifying that learning. My mom is a, a retired nurse, right. Every year she had to recertify on basic life support and cpr.

Right?

She knew cpr, believe me. Right? She knew cpr. I watched her do it several times out in the world. But every year she still had to recertify. So that's a process that's necessary.

Okay, so that was nine. What's number 10?

Number 10 is kind of another twist and wrinkle on it. It's when you need to teach others or contribute back to the body of knowledge here. Up until now, the individual learner or performer, whatever you call that person, has only needed to apply what they have learned in their own context. They haven't had to know the history, different permutations, how it's done in different industries, how it. It's done with different tool sets or anything. They just had their own work in front of them. But when you get to a point of teaching others, then you need to be able to generalize, you need to be able to coach, you need to see different and hold different ways of doing a particular process all at the same time, and then transfer that expertise to others. So that's a different moment of learning.

So think about when a subject matter expert is suddenly asked to teach a class, and not just to the people who work within their own context, but maybe somewhere else and how they now need to like, oh, there are different situations here. So it's a different moment of learning.

Yeah, I think, you know, one of my main takeaways here is that each one of these points where learning takes place, where learning happens, not all of them are salient for every learning intervention. So you know what you're going. The tools, the materials, the supports, the, the things that are going to help somebody in that situation are all going to be different depending on. On what. What point in, in the journey, the overall journey you're in at that point. I keep saying the word point.

Well, I mean, some of them are. Some of them really are points. Some of them are phases.

Yes, right.

But some of them are points. And, and that might be another takeaway. It's just that, yeah, the time is not necessarily defined on any of these.

So like at the beginning of the project I think it's really important then to define and clarify, where are you in this journey for what it is that you're trying to teach? All right, all right, Megan, what's your one more thing you want to leave us with?

Well, it's funny, right? So this is. Now we're at 10 points along an experiential learning arc. It started with five moments of need. I then thought, oh, maybe there's nine. Now there's 10. It's probably not just 10. Can we just. Can we just say that it's probably not just 10? So huge shout out to my good friends Conrad Gofferson and Bob Mosher and all respect and love to their work and appreciation for their work.

This is, you know, probably going to get nearly the traction that their work in the five moments of need has gotten, and that's totally fine. But I think it helps deepen our practice of our work and how we support learners, because if all we're doing is focusing on one or maybe two points in that journey, we may be missing out on an opportunity to really nail at home. Okay, Meg, so how'd that go?

You know, there was something I forgot, but then now I'm just remembering, like, one I really love. The one point that you mentioned that I really, really love is that remembering to apply because habit is so hard. And I was listening to something the other day that was just talking about how one of the key parts of creating a habit and having something become regular, that you're going to be doing it over and over and over again is to have that cue. You need something to trigger you. Okay, now is the time to do the thing. Yeah, I know the thing I need to do now. Now is the time to do it. And so if we're not thinking intentionally about what that cue is going to be, we may very easily miss the opportunity to have somebody really take something and make it into something useful that they can use going forward.

You know, I think you're spot on there, particularly because there's usually a gap between learning and doing.

Yes. Right.

I just came back from a conference. I'm kind of always just coming back from a conference, but I'm aware of how much I learn at the conference. And then I get on a plane, and then I am greeted with a mountain full of email. And then I have a weekend usually. So remembering to do any of those things is really hard. So having that cue, that habit that whatever is really important.

Yeah. And having people think intentionally about, like, hey, what is my cue? You know, that could be built into your learning experience. That's kind of cool. Now's time to pause. Think about what your cue is going to be to put this learning into action. This is Meg Fairchild and Megan Torrance, and this has been a podcast from Torrance Learning. Tangents is the official podcast of Torrance Learning, as though we have an unofficial one. Tangents is hosted by Meg Fairchild and Megan Torrance.

It's produced by Dean Castile and Meg Fairchild, engineered and edited by Dean Castile, with original music also by Dean Castile. This episode was fact checked by Meg Fairchild.