Exclusive Interview with Patricia Franklin: eLearning Innovator

 

Dr. Saba:  You have had an eclectic and rich background in media including journalism, educational technology, serious game design, corporate learning and eLearning. Could you describe how you became interested in technology-based education and training?

Ms. Franklin: I majored in interdisciplinary studies at the University of Southern California, combining journalism, anthropology and multimedia.  For my senior thesis, I used technology-based education tools to research and capture a changing cultural and commercial institution in downtown Los Angeles, the Grand Central Public Market, in operation since 1917. The still photographs I took of the vendors, clientele and surrounding neighborhood became the basis of a documentary produced for my academic committee.

I was friends with a musician and borrowed his equipment to edit down 14 hours of interviews into a 30-minute story, added narrative, overlaid a musical soundtrack and merged the media with a film montage of the photographs .  Following my documentary, USC designed a major in visual anthropology.

In 1994, I returned to America after a decade of writing, directing and producing in London and flew into the cradle of multimedia, San Francisco.  I took classes at SFSU’s Multimedia Studies Program and caught the new-media fever, fuelled by the wisdom of pioneering professors who inspired epiphanies of what could be achieved with technology-based learning.

It was an incredibly exciting time. In my day job as senior content developer, I worked with computer programmers and graphic designers building productivity software for the consumer market. On evenings and weekends, I utilized resources at the International Computer Science Institute in Berkeley, attended eLearning Forum meetings at SRI and began hanging out with game developers and instructional designers.

In 1997, I formed my own eLearning company, Atlas Island Media, where I created the Learning Integrated Framework Environment (LIFE) that combined behavioral simulation, multi-tiered mentoring and collaboration for corporate training.  Titles included a program on managing change and conflict resolution that leveraged personality-type assessment outcomes (MBTI & the Enneagram) to calibrate high-fidelity, personalized learning in which one could select characters based on the personality types of office colleagues.  This enabled learners to test-drive decisions and experience simulated consequences.  The program featured meta-mentor and peer-based interventions and included subject matter experts, web-resources, online community, avatars and historic figures.

I am comfortable pushing the boundaries of online learning. The ever-evolving online technologies enable us to express knowledge in new and exciting ways.

Dr. Saba: In all the different projects in which you have had a leading role, has there been a common theme in terms of how adults learn? What motivates them, how do they go about acquiring new knowledge and skills?

Ms. Franklin: The most successful projects I’m involved with make a connection between the learning material and the fulfillment of intrinsic needs.  Since we were born, we are motivated to learn in order to survive. As we develop as individuals, our needs and motivations evolve from: BASIC: Physiological —  food, water, warmth, rest; security, safety to PSYCHOLOGICAL: Belongingness and Love needs — intimate relationships and friends; Esteem needs: prestige, feeling of accomplishment  and finally to SELF FULFILLMENT: Self-Actualization, achieving one’s full potential, including creative activities

This hierarchy of needs, described by Abraham Maslow in the 1940s, prompts learning and development practitioners to find out where the learners are on the scale and to design programs accordingly.

In the context of corporate learning, there are two fundamental dynamics at play: 1) how learners acquire skills needed to serve their own development and 2) how organizations enable that process so the personal talents of their employees are developed to serve organizational goals.

It’s up to us to create content relevant to take learners to the next level of their development and to deliver it in the most effective way.    .

As Chief Learning Officer of Vistage International, where I created 200 leadership development programs for 15,000 CEOs, their 650 coaches and 130 staff, I used methods for learning and development that generated high retention.  These included simulations, role playing and immersive, experiential learning.  These technologies engaged learners emotionally and made for memorable learning.

Learners appreciated how the material covered in the lessons could be immediately applied and how it met their personal needs.   This led to improved job performance and, this, in turn, led to an increase in the rate of corporate growth by 300% and increased the books of business of workshop participants by 235%.

Adults are motivated by rewards and when learning is seen as a path to acquiring them, the level of mastery accelerates.  Savvy observers of current corporate culture know we are in tectonic transition. In the 21^st century, we are seeing an alignment of personal and corporate values, with the most successful organizations addressing the needs of a diverse workforce motivated by a purpose bigger than themselves.

 

Dr. Saba: Learning and training is a major activity of major corporations in the United States and throughout the world. As a person who has been intimately involved in decision-making what are some of the internal drivers of learning and training in the world of work today?

Ms. Franklin: As a Learning and Development leader, I provide solutions to accelerate growth and competitive advantage.  I am a strategist/tactician and I must be resourceful. Internal drivers for decisions about investments in training include:  Cost. Speed. Agility. Relevance. Scalability. Measurable ROI. Innovation. Integration with Organizational Development / Talent Development. Compliance.

• Cost.  As business units sponsor L&D programs, stakeholders rely on L&D partners to provide cost / benefit analysis based on learning imperatives, modalities and projected return on investment.
• Speed.  Productivity gains in this economy mean employees are expected to do more with less.  It also means these learners don’t have a lot of time for training.  L&D leaders must determine the best delivery platform with this in mind.
• Agility.  Learning practitioners, in collaboration with business unit stakeholders  and analytics teams monitor key performance indicators (KPIs) so they can calibrate and respond to specific situations with on-demand learning solutions.
• Relevance.  This key driver requires L&D to provide high-fidelity, case-based programs that leverage real-life learning from authentic circumstances.
• Scalability. Training solutions need to be globally accessible 24/7 on PCs, Macs, tablets, smart phones and evolving delivery platforms.   Reusable learning objects, parsed from deployed content, need to be indexed and searchable in order to scale. Programs need to come with multi-lingual capabilities and adjust to cultural norms.  This is especially true for businesses operating in emerging markets, growing through acquisition and relying on distributed workforces.

Measurable ROI. Beginning with the end in mind,  L&D practitioners need to be considering, at every stage of design and development of a program, the metrics for measuring its impact.  What are the key performance indicators (KPIs) business partners will be using to measure the success of the program?

Innovation.  L&D leaders need to research and develop improved training methods to prepare organizations for the future.

Integration with Organizational Development / Talent Development.  Learning and development solutions work best in concert with human capital development initiatives that implement programs as prime instruments for recruitment and retention.

Compliance. Most major corporations are required to train employees in a wide variety of certifiable skills as well as deliver HR programs that comply with employment statutes.

Dr. Saba: I am sure you are involved in some interesting projects now. Can you describe at least one or two of them for us?

Ms. Franklin: I’m working with a recently-acquired corporation on two initiatives.  The first has to do with creating an engaging, effective way for the entire HR group to process findings from a year-long research study of the organization’s business themes and cultural disruptors.

In order to prepare HR to manage the inevitable changes,  I am introducing gamification mechanics to motivate the team to share hypothetical combinations of themes and disruptors.  The game brings the research to life as players use it to describe new  professional development possibilities.

For the second initiative, I am designing a peer advisory program for a cohort of executives based around the globe. For this I am demonstrating best facilitation practices for their coaches, providing exercises these coaches will be implementing with the group,  sharing group dynamics expertise, issue processing,  tiger teams, mentoring and establishing operating agreements for geographically dispersed teams.

I  am also in the process of refining a conference I designed for European executives.  It correlates five leadership competencies: strategy, execution, talent management, human capital development and personal proficiency with the life lessons of Italian Renaissance Masters.

Dr. Saba: Which trends and technologies are you following now and how do you see them evolving in the future; which do you think are becoming more or less in demand in the future?

Ms. Franklin: I am following developments in mLearning , Alternative Reality Games, Google Glass, Serious Games, social networking and  online communities, peer-to-peer advisory boards, professional development, executive education, simulation, mentoring, collaboration, knowledge transfer tools, granular reusable learning objects, personalized learning technologies,  blended asynchronous and synchronous online learning as well as blended ILT/online learning, leadership development and experiential learning.

I  am  especially interested in the evolution of talent management and performance improvement tools such as individual development plans (IDPs).  These existing mechanisms for professional development will evolve as roadmaps for which colleagues can share guidance and resources and gain points for doing so. In a way, one’s IDP allows an employee to dream out loud; to declare their vision of their future role in the organization, informed by the coaching of managers and fulfilled through crowd-sourced knowledge transfer.

This is but one example of how corporate processes, from recruitment to succession are being transformed by popular online mechanisms. Just as the lines between one’s personal and professional life are blurred by social media, the future of corporate-based learning will be directly influenced by a generation of digital natives.

Dr. Saba: Thank you for an informative and engaging interview.

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Patricia Franklin’s design and implementation of innovative learning and development has impacted organizations around the world through her role as Program Director for The Economist’s online Economist Education series and as Chief Learning Officer for Vistage International where her programs influenced 15,000 CEOs and their companies.

Her strategic design approach has led to a 300% increase in corporate growth rate.  Patricia’s responsibilities have included the design of custom instructor-led and online programs as well as the successful marketing of learning solutions.  Customers have included private and public sector organizations specializing in financial services, higher education and healthcare. Her highly creative, popular programs earned her Training Magazine’s Top 125 Winner award for achieving global excellence in corporate-sponsored education.

Patricia’s most recent assignment for Economist Education has been to design and develop a business simulation on managing intercultural, cross-border teams.  This design work leverages her earlier invention of a new way of learning on the Web that integrates online business simulations with multi-tiered mentoring and collaboration.

She has written for the Los Angeles Times, Newsweek and The Economist and she became an internationally published author which, in turn, led to her being a producer and director with the BBC and International Video Network.

Patricia received her Graduate Diploma in International & Comparative Politics from The London School of Economics and her BA from the University of Southern California.  An early student of the San Francisco State Multimedia Studies program, she later became certified by the eLearning Guild as a mobile learning application developer.

For further background, please visit her LinkedIn profile.