Please pardon my crowing....

... but I just heard that I passed my final paper. I have a Masters' degree. It has taken far longer than anticipated, because I had a bit of a breakdown in the middle, but I did. I actually did it!

Next up, sign language course.

What? Why are you looking at me like that? It's called lifelong learning, and I've wanted to learn sign since my niece's deafness was diagnosed in 1988!

Can I say it again? Loud enough to be heard by the lost little girl who grew up on the wrong side of the tracks. You did it, kiddo!

On that wretched academic/corporate divide

I find the divide between academic learning and corporate learning unhelpful, and I'm sure I'm not alone. In his comment on my recent post, Garry Platt touched on a point that has been niggling away at me for lo, these three and a half years past.

He said:

I think one possible reason why academic reviews of mainstream ‘management’ models are not more accessed and taken account of by trainers and developers is in part to do with the style of writing used. In many cases, the majority in my experience, reviews, positive or otherwise of models or concepts are in written in a style and English which is incredibly hard to understand. This in my view merely reflects a ridiculous style that academia deems as necessary. I can absolutely see the need for precision but the unnecessary use of big words when little ones will do and sentence structures of an arid and ridiculous length just make things worse.

Now, I'm not sure I would always go along with the big words/little words argument. I recently read a headline that said 'lots of people hurt in smash' and ground my teeth. I don't see the problem with 'several people injured in collision', but perhaps that's just me... and as for the over-use of the word 'big'! Well, don't even get me started.

But I digress.

My greatest obstacle on my (now almost complete, and about time, too!) Masters' degree has been that of writing style. The following is part of a conversation that took place on my Facebook page on Sunday:I'm not sure what I can add to that, except to point out that the value and applicability of research appears to be severely hampered by the requirement for a certain type of language. Surely this defeats the purpose of research?

I think I would rather enjoy an exchange of views among corporate learning professionals in which more than the usual token handful have read the research. As it is, as soon as the subject of research is raised, you can almost hear the shutters come down with a clang. I suspect some are hard pressed not to jam their fingers in their ears and yell "LALALALALAAAAAA!!!"

On not needing to know

I have often bewailed the fact that I am neither fish nor fowl when it comes to the world of learning. I don't work in the field of formal education and my academic writing skills are the about on a par with my squash: I have a go at it, but I'm not terribly successful, and I haven't ever figured out what it is I need to do differently. Ergo, I am not an academic.

I work mainly with corporates in the field of workplace learning. But here, I encounter learning and development professionals without the slightest interest in the stuff that ignites the spark in my eyes and gets my hands waving.

Apparently, we workplace learning bods don't need to trouble ourselves with all that geeky theory stuff. Or so they keep telling me.

And yet they talk about six sigma and red hats and black hats. They talk about Honey and Mumford and MBTI and VAK. They talk about Kirkpatrick. They talk about management styles. They talk about the trends in presentation techniques.

What they don't seem to realise is that is the realm of theory. Theory they have often acquired umpteenth hand somewhere along the way, liked the sound of and adopted into their lexicon or practice without a second thought.

I find this irresponsible. Surely, before you impart something, and/or allow something to influence the way you teach/train/facilitate, you should explore it to make sure that it is sound? Otherwise, how is it any better than perpetuating rumour?

I was chatting to a young teacher friend last night and she was talking about the ways in which her school is attempting to engage parents in the education of their children. To get them to see that they are in fact their children's primary educators (music to my ears!) and their responsibility to their kids extends beyond dropping them off at the school gates washed and dressed each morning.

Some years ago, I had to receive therapy after a cycling accident. As we discussed my symptoms and my proposed treatment, my therapist asked if I were medically trained. When he saw my puzzled face, he estimated that at least half his patients (in an affluent town with an educated populace) would have trouble distinguishing between their liver and their kidney and saying with certainty how many they had of each.

I could cite a few more examples, but had best stop before I get into full spate. It seems to me that, in this age when almost any information you want or need is available to you at the click of a button, there are still far too many people seeing it as someone else's job to know stuff.

Well, whose job is it then? Whose job is it to know whether the content of your learning materials is sound? Whose job is it to know whether the management style model you're applying is reliable? Whose job is it to know what your children are being taught at school... and how well they're coping with it? Whose job is it to monitor the health of the only body (and mind) you're ever going to be issued?

I guess it's a symptom of my irredeemable geekhood that I simply can't understand how people can not want to know. How they can not be consumed with curiosity about the stuff that impacts their lives and the lives of people they care about.

Of course, none of us can know everything. And we certainly can't understand everything. There are times when even rampant curiosity is not going to be enough. When we want to know something, but simply don't understand it. Then you have to decide whether it's worth it to you to invest the sort of time and resources necessary to acquire that understanding. Often it isn't, so you cut your losses and move on.

But then don't present that material as fact to hordes of people and claim that it isn't your business to know the theory.

Talking about ethics...

Now that my major project is complete, I am treating myself to a bit of fiction. I started off with absolute pulp and have still not taken on anything particularly challenging. Or so I thought.

The book I am currently reading - My Sister's Keeper - has been made into a movie, so my sons recognised the title. They asked me what it was about, and this was when the fun began.

Because it's about a girl suing her parents for medical emancipation. A girl who was conceived to provide her leukemic elder sister with a matching donor. When the book opens, the elder sister has begun to experience kidney failure and wheels have been set in motion to give her one of her younger sister's kidneys.

But no-one ever asked her.

From the start of her life, she has been seen as the source of everything her sister needs, and she has never had a say in it. If she refuses to give her sister a kidney, the sister will die.

So now we have conversations about ethics and human rights and duties and responsibilities and all that stuff in our house.

It isn't easy, but I highly recommend it. The conversation is stimulating. My kids are being forced to think long and hard, and to frame their arguments cogently. For them, it's black and white. So I have been playing devil's advocate - "What if...", "What about..."

It makes a change from results-oriented thinking where only one answer is correct, and I believe it's done them the world of good. Perhaps they should debate this kind of thing in their 'learning to learn' sessions at school!

Adrienne Carlson: iPhone apps for academic types

I am not an 'academic type' I realise this afresh every time I take on the challenge of writing an academic paper. However, I have synergy with a great many of the things that drive people who *are* academic types... and if any of those drivers can be addressed by an iPhone app, so much the better.

Adrienne Carlson is a relatively new contact of mine, and she has listed 100 iPhone apps for academics. Some of them I already use, while others are totally new to me. Many of these I suspect would be of equal interest to people outside of academia, too. What she hasn't done (unfortunately) is indicate which of them are free, but I guess a quick visit to the app store should determine that.

pic of the day - Oxford

Today I had a meeting with my dissertation supervisor. This meant a trip to Oxford and back. Initially, we had these meetings via Skype, but I was such a jibbering wreck for a while that it seemed better to go the f2f route... at least for a while. It's very ungreen, but the drive gives me time to listen to BBC radio 4 (a talk radio programme, which my family will not countenance). Today - among other things - I heard Salman Rushdie doing a critical analysis of The Wizard of Oz. I kid you not!

The pendulum swings

I have been pondering this Christmas. And this is what I have been pondering about.

You know how I have been banging on about how work-related learning solutions need to be focused on what people need to do in their day jobs, and we need to stop burying them in theoretical head-knowledge?

Well, I'm wondering if the pendulum hasn't swung too far in that direction in some sectors.

I recently spent an evening chatting to a head teacher and her teacher husband. Both are about my age. The head teacher especially was expressing concern about the sort of skills being imparted to trainee teachers at college. According to her, newly qualified teachers (NQTs) and student teachers are all very well versed in a procedural approach to teaching. Almost to the level of say x, then do y, then say z.

She explained how, when she was training, she learnt a lot about how children learn. About how people respond in certain situations. She used this theory to develop an understanding about the sort of conditions that would be conducive to learning and to inform her teaching practice. What she wasn't taught was a great deal of nuts and bolts "how to teach". Her view is that NQTs now come equipped with a great many focused procedural skills, aimed at assessing pupils against the national standards, but little initiative. While they have strategies to deal with situations, they have little understanding of how those situations might have arisen in the first place.

I have seen some of the learning materials aimed at providing CPD to teaching-practitioners, and a large proportion of it would seem to be back her argument: if x and y conditions are true, then proceed as follows, if not, then take this course of action.

In the past, it always seemed to me that work-related learning on offer to existing/qualified practitioners was action-based, whereas the preparatory learning undertaken in the formal sector provided the grounding in the form of underlying theories. Is this approach falling away as we become increasingly wedded to informal learning?

Let it be be said that I am a fan of action-based learning, just-in-time performance support and all the related mechanisms for empowering people to do their jobs without dragging them through a raft of teaching. But I wonder if we aren't getting a little lazy on the theory side. I have railed on about the 'what' and 'how' in the past, pointing out that the 'when' and 'why' are equally important. I wonder if, even in some of our preparatory programmes of study we seem to be overly focussed on the what, when and how and forgetting the why.

Is an excess of 'if this then that' not a return to a form of behaviourism? When every job becomes a box-ticking exercise, who will there be who understands why such-and-such a box has to be ticked? Who will then decide that perhaps such-and-such a box has passed its sell-by date?

This puts me in mind of a (possibly apocryphal) story I heard who knows where, about a business analyst recently brought in to streamline the processes within a long-standing manufacturing company in London.

He looked at the forms that had to be completed at each stage and identified several changes that could be made. On one form, there was a box in which the supervisor of every shift was dutifully entering 'O'. There was a blur next to the box that must once have been legible text, but copies of copies of copies had seen to it that it was now impossible to identify what was so consistently being rated 'O' every day. The man asked several of the supervisors and none could explain what the box represented. All they knew was what they had been told to enter in that box. Much detective work unearthed a box in a warehouse, which contained the original master copies of all the forms in use in the factory. It seemed that, every day, the shift supervisors were dutifully recording that manufacture had been interrupted by zero air raids that day!

If no-one knows why we do a thing, are we not placing ourselves at risk of 'this is the way it's always been done' with no-one having the courage to change something, just in case it turns out to serve some vital purpose with the potential to bring the business to its knees?

Just wondering.

Image acknowledgement: Pendulum by Phillie Casablanca

Academicinfo - a new string to my bow

I have recently started blogging for Academicinfo, "an online education resource center with extensive subject guides and distance learning information." Their mission is "to provide free, independent and accurate information and resources for prospective and current students (and other researchers)."

The posts I write there are not a duplication of those that appear on this site. Currently, I am busy with a series of book reviews, which may expand to include must-read blogposts and ezine articles.

On the same site, you will also find a series of posts by Harold Jarche who is exploring social media and new understandings of literacy.

Please swing by and let us have your input.

Barking my shins on a few 'lofty' ideals

On a rare visit to the campus library, I learnt a few disturbing things about academia today. Things that were totally at odds with the principles I thought were inherent in the whole process of learning at this level. Things that sounded an utter discord with the stance taken by the faculty members during lectures.

I sincerely hope that it is only at my university that such experiences occur.

First off, it seems you're not supposed to write anything new. The librarian was tutting over my subject matter, since no past examples of dissertations could be found in the catalogue which covered the same area. In my naivete, I pointed out that someone has to be first, and it might as well be me. The response literally had me dropping my jaw: “Well, that's fine if you're researching for a PhD, but not for a Master's degree.” I said something along the lines that I had hoped that we had moved on from such academic elitism and snobbery, which won me no friends among the library staff within earshot, as you can imagine.

The second thing bothered me far more. It seemed that the only information on record in respect of a dissertation is its discipline, the author's name and its title. No metadata whatsoever. Moreover, they are all kept in an access denied area in the bowels of the library. I had known that they could not be removed from the premises. I had not known that they were stored in the holy of holies! I was not free to go and pick a few at random, read snatches, put them back, find a few others, and so on until I happened upon some that would provide me with usable precedent.

What I had to do was search the e-catalogue and give a list of titles and reference numbers to a librarian who would fetch them for me. This is tough going when you have no metadata to go on. Unless a student had chosen to call his dissertation “A First Person Narrative Exploring XYZ” I was looking for a needle in a haystack. To make things worse, I was looking vicariously, and I was only allowed two at a time.

Groan!

As I was going through this painstaking process, further damaging my popularity rating with the staff who had to run up and down the stairs every time I wanted two new titles, it occurred to me how far removed this whole business was from everything I thought academic learning was about. Not only are these publications stored in the holy of holies, they can only be read by a student or faculty member of the university. While I could only view them two at a time on the premises, you cannot view them at all. Ever.

The thing is, I was told that academic research is a discourse. You do your research and add it to the sum of knowledge. I come along and poke holes in it, or use it to springboard to my own research. How can we do any of this, if the stuff is all kept under lock and key?

After a long and rather fruitless search, I happened upon a PhD thesis called Facilitating Improvements in Teaching and Learning through Self-directed Professional Development (2001) by one Gillian Ann Turner. I was delighted. Although it is set in an entirely different field, addressing a different issue, there was so much in there that set precedent for what I am doing. It's that “self-directed” bit, you see.

It being a PhD thesis, it is something over 400 pages long. Not the sort of thing one can read in an afternoon in the library. And when one lives a two-hour drive from said library, several afternoons in a row are not really a viable proposition. I feel as if I have found a new pair of really comfortable running shoes that do wonders for my stride, but I can only wear them in the shop.

How does all that blood, sweat and toil benefit the knowledge pool if it's light under a bushel?

Stephen Downes: ten things you really need to learn

This is not a new post. In fact it's more than two years old now. Nevertheless, the conversations I follow have brough it bubbling back up to the surface again, nad it hasn't lost currency in the intervening period.

Stephen Downes compiled a list of 10 things you really need to learn. These are skills and attitudes that go way beyond the classroom/training room. Indeed, they tend not to feature in the curriculum for either of those two places, more's the pity. Then again, the responsibility rests in a child's early years with parents and family/community as well... and, in due course, with the individual himself. Note the list is not titled, things we really ought to be teaching.

If tomorrow never comes...♫ ♪ ♬

When I was a kid, we used to make the sarcastic crack, "Tomorrow has been cancelled due to lack of interest."

The Shuttleworth foundation has been working on a project called Kusasa, which is the Zulu word for tomorrow. The project was aimed at providing exploratory learning experiences for South African learners. It seems it has indeed been cancelled due to something that pretty much amounts to a lack of interest.

Very sad.

Thanks to Stephen Downes for the pointer.

Personalising learning

ICT Results e-zine has published an article that looks at the use of ICT for personalising learning using a system called iClass.

Initially, the developers tried to design a system that would replace teachers, only to find that this wasn't achievable. I like the idea of the teacher increasingly becoming the tutor/mentor. More guide on the side, less sage on the stage, but I don't think a no-teacher-at-all idea is going to fly any time soon.

At the moment, the tool is aimed at 14-18 year olds. This is cool, don't get me wrong. But I am getting incerasingly worried about what happens after 18. As I touched on in my earlier post today: we seem to be spending a lot of time and money encouraging higher order thinking and learning in our teenagers, only to drum it out of them when they hit the workplace.

The problem is that He-who-signs-the-cheque in the corporate world can't be doing with all this fuzzy research stuff, "What's it got to do with me? I just want my staff being more productive." Their focus is not conducive to a long term view on optimal learning experiences.

Making iStock lightboxes work for you

In spite of the shortcomings of so many iStock photos (whiter-than-white, straight teeth; everyone posing and smiling; distinct corporate bias; preponderance of US-centric images etc.), it remains a very useful place from which to source images for powerPoint presentations, user manuals and elearning materials. They not only stock photos, they also have an excellent supply of symbolic graphics which I find even better than the photos for PowerPoint slides and elearning pages.

But I've discovered that many people under-use the lightbox facility, so I thought I'd give a quick rundown on some of the advantages I've discovered. First let me explain what it is that many people seem to do instead. Bear in mind that lightboxes can only be created and/or used by those who have created a log in identity (how else is the system going to keep track of which lightbox is yours?).

What I've found is that many people will find a promising looking image and download a comp, or save the image with the protecting watermark across it to their own system. Perhaps to a folder on their hardrive, or to a network folder, where the project team members can all see it.

Using lightboxes allows you to do effectively exactly the same thing, except that this way, the metadata comes with the images, allowing you to search through them using a range of different keywords, rather than having to view each one individually.

Let me explain...

First - what is a lightbox?
This is a virtual holding space in which you can place images that you thing might be suitable for some or other purpose, at no expense to yourself. You can collect as many images there as you like and then come back to them later to decide which ones you're actually going to buy.

Creating a lightbox:
So you've used the search facility and ben offered a gazillion images that might be appropriate. You've spotted one within that lot that looks promising. You've selected that image and are now on the screen from which you could choose to buy and download it. Just to the right of the image, you will see the section labelled File Tools. Select the option to Add to a Lightbox.

This dialog box will open up. Since you don't yet have any lightboxes, yet, there is no option to use an existing one. If you already have a lightbox, the dialog box will be slightly different, but you'll get the idea. Enter the name for your lightbox, together (if you like) with a short description and a few keywords. I'm sure you don't need me to tell you that it's a good ide to give the lightbox a name that will make it easy to find again. If you're working on a presentation for a conference, or an elearning module for a project, why not use the name of the conference or the project? Hit Add, and in one fell swoop you've created a new lightbox and added an image to it.

Adding an image to an existing lightbox
Once you've created one or more lightboxes, you can add images to them to your heart's content. Simply select the individual image, and use the option to add it to a lightbox. This dialog box will open. Use the drop down arrow to reveal your lightboxes and select the required one. as you can see, you can opt to add a new lightbox at any point.

Public lightboxes
You can choose to make a lightbox public or private. I won't presume to tell you the circumstances under which you might choose one or the other. If an image has been saved to existing public lightboxes, this information will appear in the File Tools section. You may find it useful to trawl through those lightboxes to see if there are any other images that will suit your purpose - especially if it seems the lightbox was created to address an issue similar to yours.

Managing your lightboxesIf you look at the banner across the top of your iStock screen, you will notice the lightboxes link. Use this to access your lightboxes (and to see the featured lightbox of the week). This page will tell you whether your lightboxes are public or private - they are set to private by default. Select Manage to edit the settings of your lightboxes.

Okay fine, so now I know how to do all this, how is it an advantage?
As I mentioned earlier, an image added to a lightbox takes with it all its metadata. So you could save yourself a lot of heartache by using the search facility within a lightbox rather than across the whole of iStock to see whether you already have an image that fits a specific bill.

If you do this sort of thing on a regular basis, your lightbox contents may start to number thousands. Imagine looking through thousands of thumbnails on your system for a specific image. Instead you can opt to run a search on your lightboxes, using a few keywords to pinpoint a specific image.

If you're working with a team, you could tell a team member that you're looking for images with a simiar look and feel to the ones in such and such a lightbox. The team member can then identify a few key words to help them source additional images of the same type.

If you suddenly need more images for a specific resource, you already know that you have a shortlist set aside in your lightbox, and you don't have to go and start again from scratch.

I hope this post will have been of help to a few people. Please let me know. If all I've succeeded in doing is raise questions in your mind, please pose them... someone out there (maybe even me) will have the answer.

Corporate v academic learning

I'm exploring the common ground and divergence between corporate and academic learning for a paper on my MA programme. I hope I have now sufficiently recovered what my tutor refers to as my 'mojo' to pick up the threads of this study programme and finish what I started.

I have been one of those who has campaigned for the walls between academic and corporate learning to be lowered. I don't think the siloes are helpful to either side. I have made a concerted effort to connect in this space with learning professionals from schools, universities and research organisations as well as other corporate learning professionals. However, the harder I try, the wider the divide seems to become.

So what do we have in common? What divides us?

I'd also be very keen to read a few peer reviewed articles on the subject, if you have any useful references. One of the issues on which I have been pulled up in the past is that I do not cite enough of these. This, of course, is because I prefer to read what you have to say on a subject right here, right now, rather than an article in a journal that was two years old by the time it was published.

Perhaps the review process is one point of divergence. When I submit papers on my academic programme of study, because my field is corporate, a certain number of professional journal references are tolerated. But these are seen as being inferior to the trusted academic journals which have been following the same procedures since Noah's treatise on preferable bird species when playing 'fetch the olive branch.'

The paper only needs to be 3000 words long, so I need to restrict my exploration to a few key issues. I thought of the following:

• Drivers and intended purpose for learning - Why do we run the learning events in the first place? What do we think they're going to achieve?
• Compilation of curriculum/learning needs analysis - looking at how the decision is made as to what the learning activity/course/whatever should cover
• Nature of learning activities - How is the learning delivered?
• Role of teacher/learner - What is the dynamic?

What do you think?