The Visual Lounge

Cognitive Science & Choosing the Right Media for Learning with Clark Quinn

TechSmith Corporation Episode 280

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0:00 | 36:53

How can you use the cognitive properties of media for the best training and learning outcomes?

Whether you’re in training, in learning development, or you’re a creator making videos for your own YouTube channel, learning and understanding are non-negotiable.

This idea especially rings true in an age when people consume media across an ever-expanding variety of channels. How do you hold their attention? How do you present information in a way that people truly understand?

Dr Clark Quinn, PHD provides learning experiences and design strategies to corporations, higher education institutions, government, and not-for-profit organizations. In this revisited episode of The Visual Lounge, he dives deep into cognitive media and how to create meaningful learning experiences.

He also talks about how to transpose your knowledge into the media you make, and why creating video for video’s sake rarely achieves the best outcomes.

Join us (or rejoin us) for a greater understanding of how to integrate thinking and learning with technology to improve organizational execution, innovation and, of course, performance.

Learning points from the episode include:

  1. 00:00 - 01:10 Dr Quinn’s perspective on cognitive science
  2. 01:10 - 03:09 Matt’s intro
  3. 03:09 - 04:33 When and when not to use video for the best outcomes
  4. 04:33 - 06:19 Making media choices that communicate your story in the best compelling way
  5. 06:19 - 11:04 Understanding and applying dynamic and static cognitive properties
  6. 11:04 - 16:08 Improving learning outcomes by giving context and examples
  7. 16:08 - 20:57 Should you use video templates that can be repurposed?
  8. 20:57 - 25:11 Other things to know and consider about cognitive properties
  9. 25:11 - 28:55 How to iterate what you’ve created effectively
  10. 28:55 - 33:16 Speed round questions
  11. 33:16 - 36:52 Outro

Important links and mentions:

  1. Check out Dr Clark Quinn’s website: https://www.quinnovation.com
  2. Follow Clark’s blog: https://blog.learnlets.com
  3. Connect with Clark on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/quinnovator/

SPEAKER_00

I was thinking about the context for this, and I realized the perspective from cognitive science, from understanding how our brains work. Cognitive science was an integrative way to start pulling together different people thinking about thinking philosophers, neuroscientists, uh, cognitive psychologists, anthropologists, more. Learning science emerged from that, similarly, trying to pull in instructional design and educational psychologists and cognitive researchers. And that perspective isn't, I think, well known and used enough, and yet it gives us insight that's really powerful, like the properties of media. And so that's the broader perspective I'd like to share is that this is coming from a way of thinking and looking at the world that gives us really useful handles. And I found it extremely useful and have the ability to give people insights that they wouldn't have gotten in other ways, just because of that understanding how our brains work, which I think is increasingly going to be important because that's where things are going. We're gonna find out what technology can do, what brains can do, and we need to understand that really well to figure out where we fit in this continuum evolving world.

SPEAKER_01

Good morning, good evening, good afternoon, wherever you are and wherever you're watching from, we're revisiting an episode we recorded two years ago with Clark Quinn. When we recorded this episode, AI video tools weren't creating content in seconds. Today, you can generate a video with the prompt, you can clone your voice, you can build an entire training series without ever even turning on your camera. Pretty amazing, maybe. But it also makes this conversation even more important. Just because you can generate video in seconds doesn't mean video is always the right medium. And I say that as someone who loves video. I work at a company that builds tools for video. I believe deeply in its power. Video connects, it teaches, it builds trust in ways few mediums can. But it's not the only tool in the toolbox. Screenshots matter, images matter, diagrams matter. Sometimes a static visual communicates something faster and more clearly than a five-minute video ever could. And today, with short-form video dominating feeds with reels and shorts and constant motion everywhere, the question isn't just should I use video? It's what kind of media best supports learning? And even more specifically, what kind of video best supports understanding? And that's why this conversation with Clark Quinn feels even more relevant now than when we recorded it. Clark challenges us to think beyond format and into cognition, how our brains actually process information, static versus dynamic, concept versus context, diagram versus animation versus video. In a world where creating content has never been easier, choosing the right medium has never been more important. So hopefully you'll listen with that lens, not just how do I make more video, but how do I help someone understand better? With that said, here's our episode with Clark Quinn from February of 2024. Uh Clark, I we always like to start the show with a kind of the practical approach. And you know, I you obviously you're not necessarily a media creator. I'm sure you've created media in throughout your career, but as you think about from a learning perspective, what's what's a tip you would give to folks out there who want to use video, they want to use it for helping people to learn. Is there a tip that you would give them to help them to be maybe more successful or uh maybe have that hit the mark a little bit more?

SPEAKER_00

I guess my perspective is don't use video for video's sake, for making it more compelling or more interesting. What you should be using video for is to convey dynamic stories. Um too often we use video when we don't have to, and it's a high bandwidth and high production cost uh effort in many times and many cases. So I would like to reserve using video for when it makes the most sense, not as a panacea and end-all. We'll talk today about the specific ways in which certain different media most opportunity support certain types of learning outcomes and cognitive outcomes, and then we can dig into you know how can you swap them in and out for a variety and a variety of other things.

SPEAKER_01

Well, I I appreciate that. As someone who uh, you know, I use a I make a lot of videos, I work for a company that promotes tools that you make videos. I I I appreciate the advice though, because I do think there's there's this balance there, kind of time, cost, effort, and always I you always gotta ask, is it the right medium to deliver the message? So I appreciate it.

SPEAKER_00

No worries. And it's just our brains have evolved to uh collect certain types of information in certain ways and process it in certain ways. And we want to ideally match for that, particularly when we're you know trying to convey the most important message. There are, you know, video can capture us talking, like I'm doing right now, and we can communicate thoughts and elegantly, uh, but too often we can overuse it, we can use it without controls. I just saw an example of this the other day, where they were providing things and they didn't really give you pause and restart options. You could go back and play the whole thing, but it didn't automatically just say pause it because you know somebody's just come in the door or something. We need control over the media. But think about um Ken Burns and the Civil War uh movie he made. It was a whole bunch of static images sequenced together. Those static images were what they had at the time, but they also communicated in powerful ways when he sequenced them together. We don't we can communicate those stories in multiple different ways. We can use graphic novels, we can use narrative, prose, we can use sequences of images linked together with audio or text, or we can use video. When does each make sense? That's the important issue for me.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah, I I love that. And you know, I mean, we we often refer to Ken Burns, and he's such a master of doing those things, right? But those are not uh not outside the scope of anyone's capability. People can use imagery and they can tell stories and that, so I love that. Um and we could probably talk about just that alone for a long time, but I want to get into this idea of cognitive properties because when you when you we I connected with you and you said, hey, here's some things. Did we talk about this? And I'm like, no. Um but I think we need to do a little defining up front because my guess is most people listen to this are saying cognitive properties? What does Clark mean? And so lead us down this path of like what is this idea of cognitive properties and as it relates to to media? Right.

SPEAKER_00

I was actually thinking you were gonna ask me to define the different types of media because people describe those differently. Oh, yeah. So I actually want to start with that because it's at the front of my mind right now what I have left of one. Um when you think of uh diagrams, and that was one of the things we talked about, discussing, they communicate conceptual relationships via spatial relationships. So when you say up here is this and down here is this, and we have a linkage between them, and the other things are linked this other way. We are communicating information that's not video, that's a static image. And two things um cognitive properties I want to separate out now are static versus dynamic. So there's information that exists, you know, the relationship between um uh oh roots and and branches. There is dynamics that the roots speed up and grow the branches, but the static relationship is that you know the roots are the nourishing from the groundwater, whereas the branches are exporting the leaves which get energy from the sun. And together they put those together. Then we have the more dynamic story of an environment where you know the the water cycle, uh, evaporation, condensation, precipitation, and whatever the word is before, where it flows down the hill and gets up in the in the body of water to evaporate again. We have that cycle. That's dynamic. And sometimes we need to communicate one and sometimes we need to communicate the other. When do so I like to distinguish between diagrams and animations, and when I say animation, many people think about you know cartoons moving around. I'm thinking specifically of animating a diagram. And then we have photos, which capture context, and videos which capture dynamic context, and then we have text, which captures uh prose, you know, is a narrative, and then we have audio, which is also a narrative, and each of those are different. Um diagrams and animations capture the conceptual, they're not tied to real context, they're an abstraction. Whereas videos and images capture the actual context, so you can see behind me what my room looks like because it's actual context. We could just have an abstraction in a cartoon with a blank background or some arbitrary abstract background, which could communicate something different. There, what I begin to talk about the cognitive properties, and when you want to communicate context, a photo or a video makes sense, but when you want to communicate a concept, you may be better off with a diagram or an animation. And when you want to communicate narrative, you may want to tell a story. You can now the point I mentioned earlier about you know having still photos together become uh an a story, um, video can be used to communicate narratives and is when we watch movies and and TV series, but we're showing the context as well, and we don't have to infer the concept unless we are laying it over. So from a learning perspective, the cognitive properties we're talking about are we communicating concept or context? Are we communicating it dynamically or statically? Relationships, those are the things the cognitive properties I'm talking about. And then we need to start thinking about which we need to communicate and what media makes the most sense. And then, of course, we then think about, and then how do we mix it up so it's not completely dull and boring the whole time.

SPEAKER_01

Well, okay, so there's there's a lot here, and and those are uh you I think we're you know, you're you're doing a great job at simplifying what is a very complex kind of concept in terms of, you know, there's these properties, these media, this media, these types of media that are good at typically doing. So if I if I'm at the the, you know, I'm the instructional designer or I'm thinking about creating media for for learning, I'm hearing what you're saying, and so now I'm thinking, like, okay, what are maybe the questions or decisions that are gonna help me down that path? Because, like you said, I if I'm always using a diagram, diagrams are great, they do a great job at the thing, but if I'm always trying to use a diagram, it feels like, like you said, we the you get fatigue. Like I we actually struggle with this in video, right? If I see put a video up online and it looks the same as every other video, people say, I've already watched that video, or you know, so I I'm curious from your perspective because there's the with the practical application here going from this like understanding of these cognitive properties to now I've got to I gotta make stuff. Like a lot of our a lot of our roles is as instructional designers, particularly if you're doing uh really good in-depth design is say understanding those things, but then now it's like okay, what do I do with it? So what what would you say? How do we translate this to what what can someone do now if they understand these things?

SPEAKER_00

Well, two different takes on that. So let's talk about the traditional instructional experience first. You should be presenting an underlying model. Cognitively, models give us good basis for uh comparing our performance to what the model predicts. It gives us a basis to make decisions. You know, models help us explain what happened or predict what will happen, and then we can say if I did X, the model says this would occur, and if I do Y, the model says that will occur, and this is better than that, so I'll do this. The model tells us that. So we want to communicate a model and the diagram makes sense, but then we want to show how that plays out in context. We have evidence, research-based evidence from cognitive load theory and the like, that showing examples before we give people an opportunity to practice makes it easier to then take it on yourself. You see and abstract a few examples and it gives you some guidance. Examples need context. They show how the model plays out in the real world. So suddenly we're talking about watching a video or seeing a static image or a sequence of images telling a story. Examples work best because they really are stories that show I faced this problem, I applied this model, and this was the outcome. That's a story, that's a narrative. And we could use video or sequence of static images to convey that. Then we need practice. We need to immerse the learner into an environment and give them opportunity to make choices. Interactivity is something I haven't mentioned in terms of the cognitive properties here. This is more for the media instead of the interactivity, but then we need to allow the learner to make choices and see the consequences of those. So suddenly we're switching again to, and we might one of the things I didn't talk about in my elicitation of the types of media, I talked about, you know, video at our context with photos or video, and I talked about concepts with diagrams or animation. I talked about narrative with prose or audio, but I didn't talk about graphic novel formats and comics and those types of things where they're semi-conceptual and semi-contextually, because they strip away some of the details of context and yet provide enough that the learner can recognize the context, but that allows the opportunity to layer the concepts on top of it as well. And so we might mix this up. We might have a graphic novel format of an example and a video format of an example, and then we put the learner and it might be photorealistic, or we might start with a graphic novel. So we're mixing up the media to tell the story. Now, I said sort of two different pedagogies. One was sort of the traditional, you have a model example practice. The other one is you put the learner in a situation, this is more a problem-based type of approach, where you've specifically chosen an important problem and you provide scaffolding. You've simplified it in certain ways early on, and later on they take on more capability. But we might make resources available in the environment. So you can pull up a diagram or you can pull up a little example. We might embed that in the story. So the environment in which you're performing in might have a library of uh that has the diagrams, and it might have a history of case studies that the organization has done in the past that you pull up that are really examples. So we are mixing up media to meet different needs because for learning purposes, we have different cognitive roles at different points in the experience. So we avoid boredom in that sense, but then we should be thinking about how are we making sure we're communicating each at the right point in time.

SPEAKER_01

Wow. Uh, you know, what I'm thinking about is uh so I've noticed this trend, and and you know, we obviously we can talk about instructional designers, corporate learning all day long. I've noticed in in the world of non-instructional designers, there's a lot of people out there making training content. It's you know, we would we would probably balk at a little bit what it is, and you know, but they're on YouTube, they're YouTube creators, they're teaching cooking or fix a car. But uh what I I I I in that first, particularly in that model, right, where you've got uh, you know, you've got you're gonna put these things together, right? Model example practice. What I've noticed that they're really good at on YouTube, if if they're doing well on a channel, some not everybody's good at it, but you know, the ones that are really good. They they they hook you with that, here's the problem, right? They somehow draw you in. But then they uh in a lot of ways they're essentially doing this, right? They're modeling something, they're showing the example, but it's not a linear boom, boom, boom. They it's almost like a a lot of loops, because they're coming back to the the like the thing. Here's the problem, here's here's something you could do, that then the next thing. Um and and I'm I'm curious if you've thought about how how you might like, because obviously you could say like do these three things, and that's all we ever do. Is it something that we should be looking at if we're creators, so we're cre creating instructional content, to like build this into, you know, almost templates that we could then repurpose, or is that too structured and it's like everything is gonna just because a lot of times it's like, well, it's so specific, it's gonna just be different every time. But are there kind of general frameworks that you you've built out or you think we could build out from from these kind of this approach?

SPEAKER_00

Um, there are templates that you know there are structures for what good instructional design is. Saying giving the model, then give examples, then give practices emerge from empirical research. And that serves as a good template. We want to avoid too much templatization. I remember a company of many years ago was following uh David Merrill's dictates, and they created this very rigorous system that you talked about the type of objective you had, and then it limited the types of things you could do all the way through, but it made really rigorously accurate instruction, and you'd rather pull your eyes out than actually go through. That was unpleasant. So, um, but uh you have to be careful because some of the you know I repaired my dryer with a video from YouTube. I have no idea what I have. It wasn't a learning experience, it was performance support. It led me through the steps and diagnostic and figure out what to do, and but I didn't have I haven't had to do that again for years and years. It would have been silly for me to learn anything from it. It was just perfectly sport. And you pointed out a bit of a uh evolutionary selection process going on that the good videos are the ones that get viewpoints because they're people who naturally draw upon some of these principles. Um, and you know, that iterative cycle you were talking about. They're showing this step and talking about what leads to it. And in their narrative, they talk a little bit about the models that gave them the guidance. And Andrew Schoenfeld at Berkeley did some of the greatest stuff of actually going down the way and talking about the thinking behind each step, which experts often don't have access to. Um, cognitively, the research at the University of Southern California's cognitive technology group by people like Richard Clark showed that 70% of what experts do, they don't have conscious access to, which is really problematic for instructional design because you've got these experts doing things and they don't even know what they're doing. They can tell you what they but they struggle to tell you what they do, and you really have to work hard to pull it out. But these people somehow, the best YouTube providers are managing to articulate the underlying thinking and then showing how it plays out in context step by step by step through a process. And you may learn something from it if it is something you do frequently and you go back and view it several times each time until you've sort of internalized it. But we have to think a lot about what is the context, what does it need, how frequently. When you look at the principles of you know designing instruction, the criteria that determine how much practice you need and how much articulation tend to be. It's how inherently complex is it, how frequently you can perform it in the real world, um, how important is it if you get it wrong? That will turn a lot of these factors that are sort of not articulated explicitly in these YouTube videos and the selection between them, but end up playing a big role in whether you're talking about performance support or act, you know, are you happily living the information in the world? Did you absolutely have to put something in the head? And if so, what and how?

SPEAKER_01

Well, I I I appreciate that distinction because I think it is one that uh and it's not as nuanced, but it becomes kind of nuanced. Is this learning? Is this performance support? And there is a lot of things that are just performance support, right? Just show me how to do it. Don't I don't have to I don't have to know it, I don't have to, you know, draw on that knowledge at a later point or build necessarily build from that that framework to understand this other framework. Um so I think I I want to call that out because I do think that is a a really insightful point. And and I and I I know the difference, but like hearing you say it's like, oh yeah, duh. A lot of this is not instruction, it's it's really that. So um I'm I'm curious because we've covered, I feel like we've covered a lot, but what else are we missing or what else do we need to know to, again, to kind of keep us moving forward here with this understanding of the you know cognitive properties of of of using these things in a way uh because I I do think we sometimes get into this cycle of we it particularly instructional design world. where it's, you know, there's an academic field for a reason. And it's academics are good. I think and we need those, we need that work, that research. But oftentimes then uh you know in just in even my own experience, I I'll be reading a paper and saying, okay, these are good things. And I the application of it is like, well, I don't know. It doesn't maybe try make the bridge the gap to like what I actually can do or how would how I do it or even how my audience responds comparatively to the the the study you know the body of the study of the people that went through it. So is there other things we need to understand as about cognitive properties?

SPEAKER_00

Yes. So I um suggest that uh really learning scientists is rocket science. The brain is arguably the most complex thing in the known universe. And trying to systematically get changes in it by you know you know sort of random perturbations is not the way to do it. We have the researcher pointing to we have very good prescriptions in general that have teased out the importance of practice and the importance of deliberate practice and spacing of practice and a whole bunch of nuances. But putting it together for any specific circumstance that you're designing to support there will won't be one study that tells you how you should do that. What you're doing is putting together different aspects which is why by the way you're starting to see also a move towards more iterative approaches. So you need to create your best first guess but then you should test it and say oh this part's working that part's not let's tune it a little bit okay it's working better let's do it you know but fine tuning this thing look it's doing it and you look at uh Michael Allen Sam's successful approximation model or though uh Megan Torrance's llama lot like agile management approaches they're moving to more create a first draft even David Merrill has moved from uh bonus display theory to ID2 and now his pebble and appalling is very much you know focus on the core practice first get that right to twisting and tuning and then add other stuff around so you know the point I'm trying to make is that research gives us good prescriptions. We need to apply it in a creative way focus on engagement as well without violating the principles and then test it and tune it to see what's happening because we're not like concrete we don't have totally predictable properties. Our brains can even change you know a little bit of the Heisenberg uncertainty principle right when you're observing people doing things it changes their understanding of what they can do. Many people have created built technology solutions and tested it and found out that people go oh well now that I can see this I want you to also do this and get rid of that I don't need that now that you can do this. That's like whoa this is a dynamic process. That's cool.

SPEAKER_01

But it does require paying attention yeah I I feel like the the the pushback that then comes because I I completely agree and I can remember being in my master's program you know working a lot of theory a lot of study of of different models for learning and things like that. And of course uh you know one of the we had a journal we had to keep and we'd write I ideas and so very this great process but I remember trying to create my own models thinking how am I going to create my own models you know but I I remember one thing that is uh is common is that kind of that iteration right that there is there is no real learning process without like getting better at developing without iteration and I think I want to draw back to that the conversation with the creators as well because I think that's where they get us. They're really good at this. They they are testing stuff all the time. Whereas I think in a corporate setting particularly or even maybe in an educational setting it's really hard to do that. And I know just from my own experience if I have to make a video or some kind of piece of media that's going to go out the the the cycle time for me to come back to to iterate on that is probably not very quick. It might be a year it might be two years. And so you know from a practicality standpoint what advice would you give to folks who are saying like yeah that I love this idea of iterating but I can't iterate that fast because all the there's you know 400 courses that they want there's these pressures that pressure you know it's just the reality of of the work is that these things take time cost money things like that. So and I I'm not expecting like for you to have a silver bullet because I don't think there is one but I'm curious what what advice do you give to folks like in that situation?

SPEAKER_00

I I give varied forms of advice. The the problem is is we put ourselves in this position or allowed ourselves to be put in this position where this expectation where if we give you PowerPoints and PDFs, you can pop it in this program and turn it out on the web with a quiz and we're done. They have unrealistic expectations of what learning is they have unrealistic expectations of what the process needs to be and they have unrealistic expectations of what learning can do. If we give people information they'll change their behavior and we're done right which empirically isn't true we're not formal logical beings otherwise if we get gotten information we change our behavior but we don't it takes practice it takes a lot of development it takes getting rid of old things we don't unlearn them we learn over them sorry I can't resist uh addressing a myth along the way but we need to uh change the perception and that's going to be hard so I've told people you know do a little bit of it's easier to get forgiveness and permission but focus most on making more meaningful practice just make a better written multiple choice question that's just a scenario mini scenario where there's a situation they have to make decisions instead of asking them to respond to pull out new information. We actually have evidence that um just pulling out information doesn't lead to behavior but actually making decisions you don't even need there was always this belief you needed to make sure you knew the information before you applied it it turns out that requiring people just to make the decisions requires them to pull that information out of memory and supports the learning as well. So you only need the high level questions. So it it's a dual or multiple front attack. We need to change people's expectations help them understand what learning is better why we need to put less in the head and more in the world when we can that's a much more effective solution and we need to be subversively um creating uh learning that's more effective within the constraints we work in but also start measuring and showing that by making these changes we're making a bigger impact I know we resist evaluation a lot and yet it's gonna be the key towards moving ourselves forwards.

SPEAKER_01

Well I I've got a quote for my for my day less in the head more in the world I love that that is uh that is that's that's a that's a great statement so uh no thank you for that advice and I think that uh what a I think we'll we'll we're gonna end we'll end our formal conversation on that I want to get to speedrun here in a second but I just want to say that I I love that right that there's this process that we've got to we've got to just you gotta do it ask for forgiveness and otherwise we'll never move forward and we keep we'll keep doing delivering the same things and I I love that advice because I think it applies to this conversation I think it applies to a lot of conversations I have around video and what's true about about like how people are making video what types of videos they're making so uh Clark thank you for that good good piece of advice I appreciate it no worries. Okay so we're gonna we're gonna jump into speedrun questions if you're new to the show these are quick uh fast answers to questions that we decide by rolling a dice so we're gonna play our stinger and we'll see it in just a second all right Clark here we go we're gonna bring up our dice cam because that's right we have a dice cam and we're gonna roll for we got a 12 sided eye 12 different questions uh and the first question is number seven so here we go question number seven what's a hobby or interest you've always wanted to pursue but haven't had a chance to as of yet oh my goodness um you have so much free time with all the things that you're doing right um hobby I've always wanted to do but haven't had to I don't know might be um uh paddle boarding because I'm kind of old to jump up on a surfboard anymore haven't done that in a while and I'm thinking maybe moving to a paddleboard would be a good way to keep the ability to go out in the ocean and ride without having to paddle and jump to my legs anymore but I haven't had a chance to really give that a go. Yeah that's it sounds super fun. I've got a friend that does it on Lake Michigan and she she absolutely loves it. She'll go out though sometimes she actually tries to surf in Lake Michigan uh last time I knew it was like October November and it was cold. So it's very cold but they do get some waves there so they they absolutely do. So all right let's go back to our dice cam. Here we go second second roll and the dot is at the bottom so we know that's a six I'm teaching people dice what it means how to read the dice.

SPEAKER_00

So number six uh share a piece of advice that you've received that has had a lasting impact on you I'm impervious to advice I just do it uh I guess it's to I try really hard at this and I'm not good enough at this but this is I believe really important in lasting advice is to talk less listen more ask more questions I care about learning I just uh sometimes get so tied up in my head that I forget to stop and go wait let's check the context so that would be my the advice that's persist you with me although it's a more case of do as I say off as I do I love it it's another it's another great great piece of advice because it is easy especially when you're your exp expertise is in an area it's easy to to run. All right let's do one more here so dice towers up and we're gonna go to question four so your last speedrun question ooh this is a fun one what's a guilty pleasure song or movie that you secretly love is there something that you you love music wise or movie wise that maybe we wouldn't think about Serenity I love the TV show Firefly was a mashup of West and sci-fi and the movie is one of the ones I keep on my iPad to watch if I have a long which I haven't had in a long time and now they have movies relatively easily available on planes but it's just to me fun uh it's not high cinema um but I love the message I love the story I love the the humor I just it's fun it's my guilty pleasure.

SPEAKER_01

Perfect I love that answer. Great answer. Well Clark it's always a pleasure to talk with you and and and learn from you. I mean I've I've enjoyed many many sessions sitting in your session just picking up tidbits and ideas and uh being having my own concepts challenge. So uh if someone else wants to learn from you connect with you where should they look where what would you point us to?

SPEAKER_00

I will point you to quinnovation.com which is fortunately under my name there on the in the video. And I think out loud as you mentioned at learnlets.com that's my blog and um I try to put I've now pretty much devolved to posting once a week Tuesdays uh there and it's sort of my random thoughts but it tends to be what I'm involved in and when it's going and sometimes it's more theoretical and sometimes it's more pragmatic. But um those are the two places that are best track I mean I'm on LinkedIn as well um so that I'm somewhat active there in multiple forms of my activities.

SPEAKER_01

Perfect. I definitely recommend people go out and follow you, find you, read your stuff. It's always good.

SPEAKER_00

As we wrap up today's show we always ask our guests uh Clark for our five their final take so Clark Quinn what's your final take my final take is I was thinking about the context for this and I realized the perspective from cognitive science, from understanding how our brains work cognitive science was an integrative uh way to start pulling together different people thinking about thinking philosophers, neuroscientists, uh cognitive psychologists, anthropologists more learning science emerged from that similarly trying to pull in instructional design and educational psychologists and cognitive researchers. And that perspective isn't I think well known and used enough and yet it gives us insight that's really powerful and like that the properties of media. And so that's the broader perspective I'd like to share is that this is coming from a way of thinking and looking at the world that gives us really useful handles. And I found it extremely useful and have the ability to give people insights that they wouldn't have gotten in other ways just because of that understanding how our brains work, which I think is increasingly going to be important because that's where things are going. We're gonna find out what technology can do and what brains can do and we need to understand that really well to figure out where we fit in this continually evolving world.

SPEAKER_01

Love it and excited to see what we continue to learn because the brain like I said it is it is more complex than rocket science I'm pretty sure but uh it's good stuff. So Clark thank you again for joining me on the Visual Lounge. A pleasure Matt thanks for having me. Absolutely all right everybody you heard it Clark drops new content on Tuesdays you can go read and learn become a better creator of instruction understand these processes so that you can develop training that has better impact you can create a better message if you're not an instructional designer saying oh my gosh there's so much out there absolutely there's there's people who've learned about this and you can apply it to your stuff too. So with that said you know we love it if you like or subscribe to the show of course you can leave comments and reviews that helps us to know what we can do better. And if you've got suggestions you can email us. Got an email old school the visual lounge at techsmith.com we're also now on TikTok which is crazy so you can see some of the great quotes if you just want to follow us over there as well because we'll take these the shows get some of the best quotes put them up there makes it easy to stay in touch if you don't want to watch all the entire show. With that said though we hope that you take the things that you're learning and apply it to your lives apply it to your practice get better at what you're doing and take some time to level up every single day. Thanks everybody