Confessions of a Literate Person who is sick of Books

I saw another article today about the Kindle and iPads versus the traditional bookstores. This got me thinking.

I like the depth of books. I like the evolution of intensive thinking that a good book represents.

In contrast, I hate short, superficial articles written by reporters with the thinnest of knowledge bases. Evening news, and especially local news, drives me insane.

I want to spend a long time with characters. This includes, and in fact is most true, of the character that an author creates to reflect him or herself.

But, having spent a good deal of my 43 years consuming them, honestly, I am just sick of books for entertainment. I know too well the tricks, the techniques, the plot devices. And while I can be bemused by a turn of phrase or surprised by revelation, I just feel as if I want to move on.

Audiobooks allowed me to prolong my relationship with long form written works. I used to commute over two hours a day, and would empty out entire books-on-tape sections in dozens of libraries. But despite the value-add of fabulous voices, I found myself once again weary of the form.

I enjoy movies. I never understand it when people complain about insufficient depth of characters or relationships. If what you want is a good book, read a book! I want a director to fully use the visual and auditory nature of the medium. That meets my need for raw media, but still not the satisfaction of long form.

Television series on DVDs have recently been one of the most satisfying long form of traditional fiction. Watching one hour a night of The Wire for a couple of months is pretty perfect for the familiar passive consumption of great thinking. In this abbreviated form, one can follow the "behind the scenes" evolution that the writers and directors go through as much as the "in front of the screen" character and plot arcs.

And yet, I have to admit something terrible, especially for the countless teachers and professors with whom I eagerly engaged in discussions about the use of light or imagery in great Russian novels or curse words in contemporary theater. Here it is:

I am sick of the limitations of books. I am sick of the diminishing returns for me on witnessing new ranges of expressiveness and audience development. Instead, the most satisfying long form creative work genre I am currently enjoying and appreciating is that of a great computer game.

Funnily enough, this form takes about 40 hours to "consume," a length similar to a book. And from Fallout 3 to Arkham's Asylum, there are good enough characterizations. But what I most appreciate, even wearing my 12th grade prep school analyst hat, is the rigorous application by some great designers of their craft, including pushing boundaries.

I smile in a game as I am taught some basic skill, knowing I am going to have to use it in more and more complicated settings. I admire the appreciation of history and application of creativity that the control system represents. I enjoy the physics of the world that I find myself temporarily occupying, often on my own terms.

I am not saying that computer games are my "end-game." I hope that is not true. But I am saying that any news story on the pressure on the local bookstore versus the availability of electronic books and eReaders has already lost me. I suspect that our upcoming best creators may similarly want to "play through" not "end up in" literature.

Does the inherent impossibility of education, training, and other formal learning processes drive all of those involved insane?

Albert Camus famously asked, does life have meaning, and if not, should he kill himself? Here's a similar question I was pondering while in a meeting the other day. Does the inherent impossibility of traditional education, training, and other formal learning processes drive insane all of those involved for too long?

Here are some of the problems facing traditional formal learning designers:

It is almost impossible to change the long term behavior for most students in a contained event, no matter how long. There is a predictable decay curve.

The tools available themselves just too blunt for knowledge capture and sharing. PowerPoint? Lectures? Workbooks? Really?

The measurement techniques are too weak and they take too long, and they measure the wrong thing. Quizzes? Surveys? Standardized tests?

It costs too much to deliver useful content. Development costs... Deployment costs... Management costs... Infrastructure costs...

The time to return on investment is too long. Months? Years? (For K-12) Decades?

Most subject matter experts have no passion or desire for participation in the development of a course. The quid pro quo model just isn't there. Participation for subject matter experts most often means doing additional work for no additional pay in a way, if successful, reduces their value to the organization.

The nature of learning interventions are too discreet from life. Leave life. Learn in foreign context. Return. Forget.

The programs are funded indirectly, so students are seldom customers. How many layers are there between a student in a public school and the people who pay for it? Or a corporate employee?

Students themselves are, of course, incredibly inconsistent. They come in with the full spectrum of background skills and knowledge, interests, and needs.

Formal learning programs have to be both individually specialized, yet integrated across other programs. Google can't even do this.

Programs require a lot of time on the part of the student outside of engaging the learning content. Downloads. Passwords. Buildings. Buses. Food. Lock down drills.

As a result of deploying classrooms, do people involved in formal learning programs go batty? Do they get paranoid, or turn into hucksters, or do they cast customers and sponsors and business leaders as enemies, or quickly burn out, or just focus on building fiefdoms? Or if all actions lead to pain, then is it easier to do nothing? Is the best strategy to tamp down all sense of ambitions and just go along with the flow?

Is there an answer to this problem? I believe there has to be two. I believe the combination of social media (for the fast, fluid, personalized content) and sims (for the deep, engaging, structured core content) will provide an absolutely necessary spectrum of deliverables, that will save the sanity of many students, sponsors, and formal learning professionals. It may be too late for the old guard, but it comes just in time for this and future generations.

From where do educational simulations used in academics come?

It is a question I get asked all the time: from where do simulations come for academic classes? There are several answers:

• Commercial off the shelf games: for some lucky professors and students, computer games built for entertainment and bought through retail channels provides a deep enough and curriculum-aligned enough experience. The two most famous are the Civilization and SimCity series. The pros are that these experiences have reasonable costs (around $40 per student), very high production values, and have at least some element of fun built in them. The biggest con is that only a few such games exist. Further, both deans and parents can be uncomfortable having the students spend their class time playing off-the-shelf games. They can also be awkward to install.
• Free foundation, cause, or corporation sponsored sims: there are a lot of free, typically Flash based sims that have been created in the last few years by various organizations. They represent some of the most successful and innovative examples of serious games ([McDonald's game], [Binary Numbers], [Budget Hero]). Where they fit, they can be perfect. The pros are that they are free and typically easy to access. The cons are that they are short, often shallow, and often editorially skewed.
• Off the shelf educational simulations: some vendors sell prepackaged off the shelf simulations. The pros are they tend to be rich and detailed educational experiences. They have technical support. They also have instructional support -- notes for how to use them in a classroom environment. They may have gone through several generations of modifications. The cons are: the licensing is often restrictive, and the cost tend to be three or four times as much as a computer game.
• Internal development house: some institutions have a staff of people (usually between one and 20) who are dedicated to building simulations to support internal classes. The good news is that these people are focused, have the requisite skills, and are aligned with the goals of the institution. And once built, the content can be infinitely reused and shared. The cons are the often the experiences that result are dry, and take three or four times longer to build than expected. These internal development groups often fight with the subject matter experts with them they have to work. Who funds these groups is also up for grabs from budget cycle to budget cycle.
• Modded off the shelf computer games: some professors have to change existing off-the-shelf computer games to make them appropriate for their class. These bundles of changes are called mods. The pros are that for not much money, professors can access very rich environments. The cons are that student still have to buy the original computer game, and often compromises had to be made in order to shoehorn the changes into the computer game, resulting in a suboptimal or even unstable experience.
• Professor created simulations: we are seeing an explosion of technology savvy academic hobbyists creating simulations to support their class, developed in their free time. (It was professor hobbyists who also created the genre of interactive spreadsheets decades ago that are still in use today.) The pros are these tend to be perfectly aligned with content, and are deep and nuanced. They can also be freely shared. The cons are the simulations are often makeshift, with kludgy interfaces. They also tend to be more labs than finished sims. Knowledge of how they were built and how to best deploy them tends not to get recorded.

Just as sims come in different Genres, so to do they come in different business models. One nagging question is, should these sims be packaged as books and sold to students directly, or should they be packaged as infrastructure and paid for centrally by a department?

Clark Aldrich no longer tied to SimuLearn

Hi all,

Please note that, as of September 2009, I am no longer associated with SimuLearn, Virtual Leader, or vLeader 2007. To the best of my knowledge, SimuLearn is still in business, and has three remaining employees, Ken Kupersmith (part-time), Graham Courtney, and Pierre Thiault, who would be thrilled to take your order, or who can otherwise try to answer any questions.

Please do not consider the use of my image or voice on the products or marketing to imply my endorsement of either the current marketed version of the product or the company.

Thank you,

Clark

P.S. Please contact me directly if you are interested in case studies.