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/

I was thinking about the context for this, and I realized the

perspective from cognitive science, from understanding how our brains work,

uh, 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, 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 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. I 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 going to 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 continually evolving world.

Good morning, good evening, good afternoon, wherever you are and wherever you're watching from.

We're revisiting an episode we recorded 2 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 a 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 5-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, I, we always like to start

the show with a kind of the practical approach and you know,

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? 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, in 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 opportunely 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 variety and a variety of other things? 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 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 got to ask, is it the right medium to deliver the

message? So I appreciate it. 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 And, 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, 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. Yeah,

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 that we talk about

this, and I'm No, um, but I think we need to do a

little defining up front because my guess is most people listening 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? I was

actually thinking you were going to 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, roots and, and branches. There is

dynamics that the roots feed 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 for 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. Mm-hmm. And then we have

photos which capture context. And

videos which capture dynamic context. 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.

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— I mean, 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

a, an, a story, um, video can be used

to communicate narratives and is— why do we watch movies and

TV series? But we're showing the context

as well, and we don't have to infer the concept.

Unless we were 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?

Well, okay, so there's, there's a lot here and, and those are—

I think we're, you know, 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 going to

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 with the thing. But if I'm

always trying to use a diagram, it feels like, like you said, 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'm curious from your perspective because there's the, the

practical application here going from this like understanding of these cognitive

properties to now I've gotta, I gotta make stuff. Like

a lot of our, 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?

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, uh, 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 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 'cause 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, or st— 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 and our,

you know, 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 for 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 the situation.

This is more a problem-based type of approach where you 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 there—

the environment in which you're performing in might have a library

of, 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.

Wow. Uh, you know, what I'm thinking about is, uh, so I've noticed this trend

and, and, you know, obviously we can talk about instructional designers, corporate learning all, 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 it a little bit what

it is and, you know, but they're on YouTube, they're YouTube creators, they're

teaching, uh, cooking or fix a car.

But what I— in that first, particularly in that model, right, where you've got, uh,

you know, you 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 they're doing

well on the channel— so 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, 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 lot of loops because they're coming back to

the, like, the thing. Here's the problem. Here's, here's something you could do that

then the next thing. Um, and I'm

curious if you thought about how you might like, because obviously you could say

like, do these 3 things and that's all you ever do. Is it something that

we should be looking at if we're creators? So we're 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 going to just— because a lot of times

it's like, well, it's so specific, it's going to 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? 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 emerged from empirical

research, and that serves as a good template. We want to avoid too

much templatization. I remember a company, uh, many years

ago was following David Merrill's dick tips, 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. And it

made really rigorously accurate instruction, and

you'd rather pull your eyes out than actually go through

it, or That was unpleasant.

So, um, but 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 had. 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 then— but I didn't— 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 propor— sport. And

you pointed out a bit of a, a

evolutionary selection process going on, that the good

videos are the ones that get viewpoints because there are 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

talk— 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. 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 is the 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 perform it in the real world, um, how important is it

if, if you get it wrong. That will determine 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 sport

or act— you know, are you happy leaving the information in the world? Did

you absolutely have to put something in the head? And if so, what and

how? Well, I, I appreciate that distinction because I think it is

one that, uh, and it's not as nuanced, but it becomes kind of— 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 want to call that out because I do think that

is a really insightful point. 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 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, just in even my own experience, 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 to 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?

Yes. So I, um, suggest that, uh, really

learning science is, is rocket science. So 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

research you're 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. Um, 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 Michael Allen's SAM, Successive Approximation

Model, or the Megan Torrance's LAMA,

lot like agile management approaches. They're

moving to more create a first draft. Even David Merrill

has moved from, uh, bone splay theory to ID2. Now his Pebble in a Pond

is very much, you know, focus on the core practice first,

get that right, to— testing 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. Um, 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? Uh, 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 that the 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 It's like, whoa, this is

a dynamic process. That's cool, but it does

require paying attention. Yeah, I, I feel like 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 ideas, and so Very— this great process, but I

remember trying to create my own models, thinking, how am I gonna create my own

models? You know, but I, I remember one thing that is, 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 wanna draw back to the, 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 gonna go out, the, the, the cycle time for me to

come back to iterate on that is probably

not very quick. It might be a year, it might be 2

years. And so, you know, from a practicality standpoint, What advice would

you give to folks who are saying like, yeah, I love this idea of iterating,

but I can't iterate that fast because all— 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 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? I, I give a 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 formological beings. Otherwise, if we get— got new 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. Uh, sorry, can't resist 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 than permission.

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's, it's a dual

our, our 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 going to be the key towards

moving ourselves forwards. 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, that's a great statement. So, uh, no,

thank you for that advice. And I think that, uh, what I

think we'll, we're gonna— we'll end our formal conversation on that. I want to get

to speed round here in a second, but I just want to say that I

love that, right? That there's this process that we've got it, we've got to just—

you got to do it, ask for forgiveness and otherwise we'll never move forward and

we keep— we'll keep 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 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 speed round

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 you 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 die, 12 different questions. And the first

question is number 7. So here we go. Question

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. Hey, um, hobby I've always wanted to do but

haven't had to— I don't know,

it might be, um, Uh, paddleboarding. Oh. 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. 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. Last time I

knew it was like October, November, and

it was cold. So— very cold. But they do get some waves there. So 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 6. I'm teaching people dice— what it means, how to read the dice.

So number 6, 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 and lasting advice

is to talk less, listen more, ask

more questions. Sure, I care about

learning. I just 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 persisted with me, although it's more a case of do as

I say, not 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 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 going to go to question 4. So your last

speed round 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? Oh,

movie— rennity. I love the TV show Firefly. It 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 flight,

which I haven't had in a long time. And now they have movies Sprout's 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. 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 being— having my own concepts challenged. So if

someone else wants to learn from you, connect with you, where should they look? Where—

what would you point us to? Um, I'll, uh,

point you to quinnovation.com, which is fortunately under my name there

on the— in the video. Um, and I think

out loud, as you mentioned, at learnlets.com. That's

my blog. And, um, I try and— 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, what 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 me. I'm on LinkedIn as

well, um, so that I'm somewhat active there

in multiple forms of my activities. Perfect.

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

always good. As we wrap up today's show, we always ask our guests Clark for

our fi— 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, uh, 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, 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 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. I 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

going to 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

continually evolving world. Love it, and excited to see what we continue to

learn because the brain, like I said, 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, you're

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, thevisuallounge@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— this shows, get some of

the best quotes, put them up there. Uh, makes it easy to stay in touch

if you don't wanna 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.