I have just downloaded Stephen Downes's PowerPoint presentation and mp3 file from his talk at CAUCE, and started listening to the mp3, while flicking through the slides, but something has so taken hold of me that I have had to stop and get this off my chest.
The theme of the CAUCE conference was: Through the eyes of our students: looking forward. The point at which I had to hit pause and come and write this post was when Stephen was talking about the different perceptions of learners and teachers, indicating that they belonged to two different generations. I just can't get comfortable with that. It itches. It is out of keeping with what we keep saying about lifelong learning, about all of us being learners... all the time, about ubiquitous learning. I can accept that in compulsory education, students are (usually) younger than the teachers - although in many countries (including my own) this is cetainly not always the case. However, in post compulsory education, there are many young teachers and even more mature students (I am hoping to become one of the latter, myself - again - in September this year).
Okay, okay, I know that the vast majority of the learners in further/higher education facilities will be younger than the staff, and I accept that CAUCE is about university education. But it is also about continuing university education, and to start from this generational assumption, as if this represents the only norm is to sharpen another line that should be past its sell-by date (see my post on industry and school - the other line that I reckon should be blurring).
I spent 17 years teaching. For most of those years my learners were older than I was, sometimes double my age and more. Only in the last three years did the balance began to shift, and even then I was seldom the oldest person in the room. So where did I go to teach these "senior citizens"? For the most part, I went to where they worked. But for two years, I worked in an outreach centre at a FE college, teaching IT skills to anyone who wanted to learn for a nominal cost - that was where I encountered the oldest of my learners, a few of them in their 80s, while one of the tutors was just 19. I could bore you silly with heartwarming stories from those two years.
By constantly plumping for the generalisation that learners are young, connected digital natives and teachers are older digital immigrants, we are contradicting our own message. Just as by separating institutional education from work-based learning, we are polarising the very community we are seeking to unite. And if we, as learning professionals and professional learners reinforce these nominal boundaries, we're in danger of falling victim to friendly fire.
End of soapbox moment.
Wednesday, May 31, 2006
Isn't it time we stopped playing the generation game?
Tuesday, May 30, 2006
Industry and school
George's white paper seems to have generated a lot of talk. The thing that worries me a little is that there seem to be two different responses. Those of us involved in work-based learning seem to be making one set of assumptions, while those involved in the education sector seem to be making another, and of course this informs our responses. I guess it's a paradigm thing (how come that word keeps coming up these days?). I can accept that there must be some difference between the compulsory and post-compulsory phases of the learning life, but I would expect that the line between post-compulsory learning in formal/higher learning institutions and the workplace would become ever more blurred. Not necessarily in terms of content, although that is also a possibility, but particularly in terms of delivery of material and access to knowledge.
Recently I heard mention on a BBC news broadcast that a university professor had begun to use podcasts for his lectures. My initial (most uncharitable) response was a very sarcastic, "Whoop-de-do! Welcome to 21st century, mate!". Fortunately, I was alone in my car, and no-one heard me. Except I've now just gone and blown my cover, haven't I? Anyway, after a few moments' reflection I thought, actually, if it gets people thinking about alternative delivery methods, I'm in favour.
Because the audience at further/higher learning institutions will increasingly tend to comprise digital natives and because of the scope for collaborated projects in these environments, I would almost look to these (traditionally formal) institutions to get learners into the habit of social media, so that when they move into my realm, it's already a given. Perhaps I'm just looking for the easy life :-)
I think Jay Cross captures my situation neatly with this paragraph taken from a post about unworkshops:
The work environment has changed. Networks promote teamwork and two-way relationships with customers and suppliers. The internet makes communication instantaneous and information available to all. The world of work is adopting internet values and practices — collaboration, authenticity, transparency, always on, loosely coupled, experimental, and often, too much information. Work itself has changed. Everyone's work is knowledge work. Personal judgment is replacing company rules. Workers are challenged to make their own decisions, on the fly. And no one has time for workshops and courses.There are, of course, things that are always likely to be taught by means of workshops, even if those workshops have to go virtual to make that viable (mind you, does a real time workshop still get called virtual just because it happens via webcam?). But I find that I have to keep the last three sentences of that quote in the forefront of my mind as I design learning these days.
I also find that my learning material is beginning to look more like a knowledge portal, which brings us back to "Everyone's work is knowledge work."
Friday, May 26, 2006
George Siemens's White Paper: Learning in Synch with Life
I have come across several pointers to this (via blogs, phone calls and email) white paper from George Siemens for the Google 2006 Training Summit, among them Mark Berthelemy and Stephen Downes (I'm sure there were others, but I can't remember them all - sorry). Reading through it, there were several moments when I wanted to stand up and cheer.
So much of what George is referring to is relevant to projects on my plate at work, right here, right now. There's huge emphasis (as you would expect from George) on connectivism, networks and social media. I kept feeling like I wanted to say, "This is what I'm talking about!" If I were to extract what I found most helpful, there would be so little of the paper left, it wouldn't be worth the effort, so I'll settle for just this one quote:
A learning model is required that is reflective of the challenges and opportunities facing learners now.What I particularly like about George's work is that I know he's not a pure theorist. This is a man with a direct accountability to a group of learners and to an institutional hierarchy in his day job. He is daily engaged with the process of getting people to see that he's not actually trying to make water flow uphill: the water is flowing quite happily downhill, now get in the flippin' boat!
That said, this paper lays out the theory. Now it is time to put it into practice. This is the part that's not so easy. Balancing a client's perception of their own requirements with the changing state of knowledge and learning from our perspective is very tricky. George mentions the reluctance of organisations to set aside the real-life-on-hold approach to learning and buy into this approach of learning that is in synch with life - an integral part of the day job... and the rest. Learners (and I hope I count us all in that group) are getting on with the business of this type of learning - organisations need to find way so to facilitate, support and augment that.
So now we know what we should be doing, we know why we should be doing it, we know when we should be doing it (now). The next step is the how. How are we going to persuade (s)he-who-signs-the-cheque to let us get on and do it? (To be fair, I know that's my problem, not George's, but I just had to vent for a moment.)
Freedom of blog-speech?
This post on freedom of speech in the Chicago Herald News via Stephen Downes. Although this instance revolves around a school pupil, the issue has wider significance for those of us with non-corporate blogs. The minefield of drawing up company policies in respect of blogging is illustrated here. Where does freedom of speech end and the employee's contractual duty not to bring the employing company into disrepute begin? Does the employing company have the right to fire someone for bad-mouthing the company at a private party? In a pub? Is a blog governed by different rules? Is the issue the size of the audience? The potential for the slight to be picked up by the press or a competitor? It's a tricky one and I suspect there will be a few precedent setting cases along the way. Sadly, this young man is caught in the middle of one such situation.
Calvin and Hobbes (again) rewarding achievement
When this cartoon landed in my Bloglines today, my mind went zooming off in a million different directions, thinking of all the metaphors I could use and how I could relate it to learning and teaching. But you know what? I don't think I need to explain - the cartoon says it all, and you're smart enough to come up with your own clever metaphors and parallels.
It's getting to the point where I might as well just put in a daily link to Calvin and Hobbes. Perhaps I could do a dissertation on the Calvin and Hobbes philosophy of teaching and learning :-)
Tuesday, May 23, 2006
Jay Cross on Informal Learning
This link via Stephen Downes. Jay argues the case for informal learning in his inimitable fashion. My favourite quote from the post is:
Training is something that’s pushed on you; learning is something you choose. Many a knowledge worker will tell you, “I love to learn but I hate to be trained.” Knowledge workers thrive when given the freedom to decide how they will do what they’re asked to do. They rise or fall to meet expectations.One of the factors that is impacting the way I approach learning design nowadays is summed up in Jay's observation that:
If I can harness that sort of immediacy of learner-driven access to learning within the materials...Google is the world’s largest learning provider, answering thousands of inquires every second.
The Disruption of Social Media
I read Jackie Danicki's post on the VNU Blogs and Social Media Forum (via Mark Berthelemy) and this paragraph jumped up and smacked me in the face:
Someone (I didn’t note who) quotes Hugh MacLeod saying that no company should get into social media if they don’t actually welcome disruption.We (bloggers) have said it in so many different ways: this is very likely a driving force behind initiatives like DOPA. It's the disruption in the classroom that is unwelcome.
A teacher friend recently told me that the computers in the ICT classroom at his school have had their Internet access barred, because the teachers couldn't control what the kids were up to. Sites like MySpace and MSN (instant messaging) were being hit almost constantly during school hours. I fully acknowledge that this is a problem, but the path they (and DOPA, and NASUWT) are choosing is not the answer.
Monday, May 22, 2006
Delivering Computerized Assessments Safely and Securely
Via Trainingzone I downloaded a white paper from Questionmark with this title, authored by Eric Shepherd, John Kleeman, Joan Phaup, Kay Fair, Martin Belton. I found this paragraph significant:
Over-engineering low-stakes assessments can result in unnecessary costs and wasted time. Under-engineering high-stakes assessments can undermine people's confidence, organization's processes, and undermine the face validity of the assessment.The paper distinguishes between formative, summative and diagnostic assessments, defines four different assessment types (exam, quiz, survey and test) and categorises the consequences of passing, failing or completing each of these respectively. Delivery considerations are listed in relation to each of the four types.
Different types of assessment environments are considered. In the spirit of the subject matter it seems, symbols are allocated to the different environments to indicate their suitability for delivery of the four assessment types. For example, professionally controlled centres score an A+ for very high-stakes exams, but a lowly F for quizzes and surveys, while the best overall scores seem to belong to training rooms, with scores ranging from a B- for very high-stakes exams to and A for surveys and tests.
Attention is given to the creation of the right environment and the deployment of software to ensure security, touching on authoring, communication, scheduling, monitoring and browsers.
I found some of the terminology a bit odd ("reduce forgetting" as opposed to the more positive "improve retention"), but that might simply be my own pedantry rearing its head, and the section numbering is inconsistently applied, but it makes for interesting reading.
Some years ago, I worked at a college that offered the City & Guilds IT courses. These courses all culminated in an exam with a very rigorous marking system from which the tutors were not permitted to deviate. A pass or fail meant the difference between receiving or not receiving the coveted certificate. It was heart-rending to have to fail a learner who had eveidently grasped the concepts, but whose single error happened to have been one of the mandatory points, while passing another whose multiple errors were on non-mandatory points and fell within the permitted quota (it was also very difficult to try to explain this to learners in the former category!).
During my time there, the e-Quals were due to have been introduced, with some form of online assessment replacing the traditional hard copy exam papers. However, there must have been some complications associated with this process, since the e-Qual failed to land (apologies Jack Higgins!) during my time there. I have no idea whether this transition has now taken place and if so, how successful a step it proved to be.
Nowadays my involvement with assessment tends to be restricted to quizzes and surveys, so I do not feel qualified to judge the accuracy or usefulness of the content of the white paper. I would be interested to hear the views of those who are closer to the coalface.
Friday, May 19, 2006
Tell us what we want!
Is this the marketing world's take on we don't know what we don't know? Some years ago, I was working at a college and one of my "silver surfer" learners was looking to buy his first computer at the age of 60+, but had no idea what to ask for or how to select the most suitable product. Knowing that a salesperson on commission can smell ignorance a mile away, he was understandably intimidated by the whole prospect!
Perhaps there's a market niche for tech-savvy folks of intimidating appearance to hire themselves out as shopping escorts for people in this situation !-)
Wisdom of crowds
Yesterday, I attended a team development session that focused on group decision making, drawn in part from James Suriowiecki's book "Wisdom of Crowds". In case any of my team who didn't attend are interested, here is a synopsis of what it was about, as well as my own reflections:
Philosophers such as Nietzsche and Thoreau contended that, while individuals may be wise, crowds/groups were not. Surowiecki's book challenges this view and cites research by Belbin and Galton that evidences that group judgements, when aggregated, tend to be wiser or closer to the truth than those of individual experts, without there being a need to start with a particularly smart or well-informed group. The example of "ask the audience" in the TV quiz show Who Wants to be a Millionaire was cited - apparently, over the history of the show, this option has generated more correct answers than the option to "phone a friend" who may be expert in the subject.
Types of crowd wisdom cited were:
Cognition: pertaining to market judgement
Co-ordination: pertaining to behaviour patterns
Co-operation: pertaining to the voluntary suspension of self-interest and/or distrust to form a network
Examples of causes failed crowd intelligence:
Too centralised: Columbia shuttle disaster blamed on the overly hierarchical structure of NASA
Too divided: failure to prevent 9/11 blamed on lack of cohesion between intelligence analysts
Too imitative: the information cascade, resulting in the "everyone's doing it" mentality
Groupthink: a situation where each member of a group deliberately conforms to what appears to be popular consensus. The Bay of Pigs debacle was blamed on this phenomenon in the team of decision makers
We covered some of the experiments that have been conducted to explore things like groupthink, conformity and obedience:
Asch's conformity experiments which investigated the extent to which individuals could be influenced to make a patently incorrect statement so as not to disagree with the majority.
Stanley Milgrim's obedience to authority experiments which investigated what he believed to a be a peculiarly German trait to carry out acts of atrocity in obedience to instruction (he obviously hadn't heard of the Zulu half brothers Shaka and Dingane). To his surprise (and mine), apparently 65% of us are likely to administer a potentially lethal electric shock to a complete stranger on the instruction of an authority figure. Regardless of nationality. I can't help wondering what the long term impact was of this realisation on the naive subjects of this experiment!
The elements required for a wise crowd were identified as:
- diversity of opinion
- independence
- decentralisation
- aggregation
- keep ties loose
- expose yourself to as much information as possible
Some recommeded reading to come out of the session:
Wisdom of Crowds by James Surowiecki
Obedience to Authority by Stanley Milgrim
The Toyota Way by Jeffrey Liker
An Intimate History of Humanity by Theodore Zeldin
My reflections
I found the workshop interesting and informative. I do not consider myself sufficiently expert in the subject matter to take issue with most of the allegations or findings, but I did have one major reservation. I was concerned about the use of the terms "crowd" and "group" interchangeably. I consider them very different phenomena and subject to very different psychological influences. To me, a group would be something like the electorate, motorcyclists or television viewers - a disparate collection of individuals loosely connected by a common interest or purpose (my own definition that probably needs work!). A crowd, on the other hand would be an audience, a rally or a congregation - all simultaneously subjected to a set of circumstances. I strongly believe that this is an important distinction that will have enormous bearing on collective behaviour, although the workshop presenter did not agree with me.
Thursday, May 18, 2006
Learning objects
The conversation on the beginning of the end of the learning object is gathering momentum. Albert Ip (via Stephen Downes's OLDaily) and Michael Feldstein have both posted on it recently. As a learning designer, I'm still trying to decide how I would get by without them, but I'm willing to be taught. I can see that this is going to exercise me for a while.
Wednesday, May 17, 2006
Education in Italy
Time recently published an article about the disaffected Italian under 40's, which includes the paragraph:
Today's Italy is defined by stories like that of Vincenza Lasala. At 32, four years after graduating with honors in mechanical engineering, she is living with her parents in the same house where she grew up. She has sent more than 200 résumés to large corporations and small companies around the country, but all she has managed to secure are a handful of part-time stints, unpaid internships and training programs. From her home in the sleepy southern town of Avellino, near Naples, a frustrated Lasala speaks for much of Italy's younger generation: "Without a job, my parents are basically still in charge of my life. After all my studying, I don't see the fruits of my effort. Right now, I can't even envision my future."I read the article and felt all the things a sensitive person feels in response to this sort of news, but I didn't think it had much to do with me. I live in a different country, my political insight is limited at best - the whole situation seemed remote somehow.
Then, yesterday, I picked up (somewhat belatedly) the Time magazine of 8 May and read a letter that brought it oh, so much closer to home and into a realm I could get a handle on. The letter comes from Giulio Cicconi in Teramo, Italy:
While you cited cultural, social and economic reasons that young, educated Italians under 40 still live with their parents, you failed to mention the outdated and inadequate teaching system. Since education doesn't focus on practical, market-orientated subjects, Italy's potential workforce is full of talented and educated youths who are inexperienced and struggle to find their place in the labor market. A first-class degree doesn't help when you are faced with high rent, a housing crisis and double-digit unemployment.This is ageism at the opposite end of the spectrum than is experienced in the UK, and Cicconi has pigeonholed a possible reason for the problem: irrelevant education. And is the need for relevance in learning not the song we learning-geeks sing long, loud and repetitively to whomsoever will listen?
Even if I knew how to remodel the Italian education system (which I don't pretend to), I wouldn't know how to begin gaining the ear of the national education department. But maybe, just maybe, the noise we make on the blogosphere will reach the ears of someone who does know how and can make a difference.
Time's 100 most influential people of 2006
I'm a bit late with this one, but I didn't get to see the publication until yesterday. Time published a special edition for May 8, giving their list of the top 100 movers and shakers of today's world in a range of spheres:
- Leaders & Revolutionaries
- Scientists & Thinkers
- Heroes & Pioneers
- Builders & Titans
- Artists & Entertainers
But the online community should be pleased with the inclusion of Jimmy Wales, the Flickr Founders, the MySpace Men, Omid Kordestani and the Skype Guys.
Friday, May 12, 2006
The future of e-learning
I found this Breeze presentation from Kineo's Mark Harrison via Stephen Downes 's OLDaily. I enjoyed the both the content and the format, although I would have preferred a swing in emphasis from bullet points to graphics, but then my abhorrence of bullet points is no secret!
I didn't find myself digging my heels in against anything Mark had to say, although time will tell whether his predictions are on the money. I found particular resonance with the point that we don't refer to the work we do at our computers as e-working, so why should we have the term e-learning? Flippin' good question!
Thursday, May 11, 2006
Thriving under pressure
(Amended)
According to George Siemens in this articulāte presentation (and I'm paraphrasing): when the pace of change/development is moderate, an imperfect learning model is acceptable. However, when external pressures force the pace to increase, we are forced to reconsider what works and what doesn't.
Isn't that weird? When we have the leisure to investigate things, to make new discoveries, we accept the status quo. When critical mass is reached and we have more to cope with than we can manage - that's when we start to explore, research, trial.
The same sort of thing happened to plastic surgery, I'm told. It was during the war (I think it was WW2, although it might have been WW1 - or even both!) that horrifically injured and disfigured people began to require medical attention in large numbers. (Note: according to the American Society of Plastic Surgeons, it was, in fact WW1). In the middle of this dramatic increase in demand, surgeons began to find ways to rebuild destroyed faces and perform skin grafts on burn victims. They almost routinely did what they would have thought impossible a scant few years (months?) previously. You would have thought that they had enough on their plates just keeping up with the workload, but somehow they found the time and the inspiration to be innovative and creative, to challenge boundaries and prior understanding of what could and could not be achieved.
The phrase "their finest hour" does not refer to an idyllic period in history when everyone had a handle on everything and peace and tranquillity reigned. Instead it refers to a time when people were facing the worst circumstances of their lives, and yet managing to endure, displaying an indomitability of spirit that continues to be celebrated today.
Isn't it odd how we need to be pushed beyond the edge of what we think we can handle before we discover that we're capable of so very much more?
Tuesday, May 09, 2006
Love that book
It was never (and still is not) my intention to use this blog for book reviews, but right now I am so impressed, I have decided to make an exception.
I have just read Love that Dog by Sharon Creech. This takes the form of the poetic diary of a boy's journey into poetry and self discovery. I guess it's meant to be a kids' book (my favourite kind) but it transcends age boundaries and is well worth the read. It shouldn't take a confident reader more than an hour, and even my reluctant reader son is devouring it.
Why don't grownups go out to play?
I am an ardent fan of Calvin and Hobbes, and this cartoon, while less funny than some, raises a very good point: why don't grownups go out to play?
Note: I have no idea whether the site producing these cartoons is in breach of copyright, so I hope Mr Watterson is getting his dues out of it.
When did it become such a shlepp to go outside and expend vast amounts of energy? When did it stop being fun and start being a chore? Why do I have to drag my tail out to go for a run around the park next to the office at lunch time? I have a punchbag hanging from a beam in my garage - why is it a hassle to go and beat the whatsit out of it? Why do I betake myself to masters' swimming training and then groan as the coach writes the sets up on the board?
Mind you, my husband plays ice hockey with a bunch of "silver skaters" (non contact and no slap shots) on a Sunday night, and there is only one criterion that has to be filled in order for him to feel up to going: he has to have a pulse! He can be on death's doorstep with a raging fever, he can be suffering from an injury, he can have a boatload of work to do, but he goes to hockey, come hell or high water. He and his peers have no trouble "going out to play" ice hockey - and none of the others have his excuse of being Swedish, so what is it?
This post isn't really going anywhere, I'm just ruminating...
Friday, May 05, 2006
A different approach to school
I came across this post via Stephen Downes's OLDaily. Watching the video, I found myself thinking, as my kids would put it, "Just no!"
Stephen seems to be strongly in favour of the concept and I am usually sufficiently intimidated by his infinitely more prodigious brain and far deeper grasp of things to presume that he must be right and I must be wrong when we differ. So, I examined my motives and assumed that I must just be stuck in a different world, with a different set of paradigms, lacking the will to break out.
I acknowledge that the school in the video has structures in place to prevent a decline into complete anarchy, which was what I initially thought was the case. But I still find I can't distance myself from the notion that parents and teachers have a greater breadth of experience and a perspective that only time and, well, experience can provide. I acknowledge that these are going to be flawed adults, but as far as possible, they should have a child's best interests at heart. From this vantage point, surely they are better positioned to know what a child will need to know in order to tackle what experience has told them life is likely to have in store?
I encountered a school run on similar lines several years ago, and met several of its existing and past students. They generally seemed inadequately prepared for "real life". Their academic results were mediocre, their sporting ability was all but non-existent, they lacked drive and ambition. They seemed kind of, well, woolly - a bit granola-and-birkenstocks-and-we-are-one.
Perhaps I'm just a control-freak, but I can't see myself ever leaving my own children to decide when and if to attend lessons. One of them would stay home and play Star Wars something-or-other on the PlayStation in between episodes of Futurama and the Simpsons, while the other would hit the sports field, returning only to plug in to MSN. Their plans to become a demolitions expert and a forensic scientist respectively would never even come close to fruition.
This kind of harks back to Jeff Utecht's post about people not knowing what they don't know (although admittedly he was talking about teachers, but I think the principle holds). If they don't know what they don't know, how do they know what knowledge will prove beneficial?
It would be interesting to speak to some of these kids in 10 years' time to see whether they still feel so well disposed towards this form of education.
So I'm going to have to continue to differ from Stephen on this one, although I'm sure if we had to have a debate about it he'd open a can of whup-ass on me.
Thursday, May 04, 2006
Is Korea leading the way?
Yesterday I had a meeting with a representative of an Indian company with offices in several parts of the world. His job has taken him to several countries, and he exressed the firm view that Korea is the most technologically advanced country in the world, with Japan second and the USA third.
I was surprised at this, because I've heard a great deal about India and China as the emerging powers in the technological world, but not a word about Korea. According to this man, every Korean home is likely to have several computers (4 or 5 was his estimate) and a router. My own home has two computers, plus two work-based laptops that get brought home regularly. We also have a router. I'm a bit of an ignoramus about networks, but I kind of thought that a router was a standard requirement for a broadband connection - how else would you route your phone and your computer through it? I know that we don't represent the average UK household, but we are certainly not far from it among our peers.
So what else do they have in Korea that makes them so advanced? Apparently gadgets. Lots of them: mp3 players, Blackberries, handhelds, you name it. I heard that if you walk across any carpark you like in Korea, you will see at least two gadgets on every dashboard - antennae, satnav, all kinds of stuff. I wonder if they have wifi clouds over the cities.
Because this wasn't the purpose of the meeting, we didn't pursue the matter any further, but I'm curious now. Is this common knowledge - am I the only one who didn't know this? If so, why hasn't there been information about it all over the blogosphere alongside the information about India and China? Or is it all over the blogosphere and I've managed consistently to miss it? Or, is my "informant" misinformed?
Wednesday, May 03, 2006
Update on my quest for a master's degree
For those who have been kind enough to display an interest in my quest for an institution that is prepared to take a gamble on me (here, and here), it looks as if there is light at the end of the tunnel. I won't say more than that as this point, but will divulge details as I know one way or the other whether my application is successful.
If I succeed, prepare to be bored silly by posts about what I am learning, complete with ever-handy soapbox.
Personal learning environments
Is he back? Stephen Downes, that is. New posts are appearing on OLDaily that seem to be related to matters other than speaking engagements. It's been very quiet without him - he's like an aggregator with skin on.
Via one of his posts today, I found this link. The slides are fascinating - although there are too many bullet-point slides for my taste, but I find I want to know what the speaker said. I have this thing about a presentation being what the speaker says and not about the PowerPoint slides (see my pontification on the subject, here). So I e-mailed Scott and asked for an mp3 or a transcript. He has been very helpful, but still needs to source the audio for that event. In the meantime, he has sent me this link, that I need to make the time to look at.
Friday, April 28, 2006
The "karaoke principle"
Maybe I should patent the phrase!
A colleague and I were discussing our projects today. There is a fair degree of overlap between the requirements of our two clients. We were talking about what happens to a company undergoing transition - particularly a service industry. So much attention gets paid and (dare I say it) money gets spent on vanguard learning. The whole hearts and minds thing, then the new processes. Lots of carefully positioned learning, in the case of my colleague's client, designed to show the empathy of the transition directors for the coalface workers, to provide them with support as they cope with the uncertainty that comes with facing change and learning the skills required within the new framework.
Then comes go-live. It's after that that things tend to get a little patchy. The stabilisers are removed and real life begins to happen. While it is easy to exercise a new skill in the artificial environment of a classroom, it's whole different matter when it comes to applying the same skill in the context of the workplace. This is what I call the Karaoke principle: you can sing along to a song on the radio - every word, every note. But take away the vocal track, stick a mike in your hand and put you in front of an audience and you suddenly realise that you barely know the chorus. It's bad enough when you have the words scrolling across the screen in front of you, but if the karaoke system isn't sophisticated enough to have them... oh dear! Helllllp! One desperate soul on stage in front of everyone trying not to make a complete prat of him/herself.
This stage of the process needs to be covered by suitable learning, too.
Moving away from online courses towards REAL jit learning
A few projects on the go at work have got me thinking along these lines. This is not a definitive position - I'm on a journey, here, and this is where I've got to now. Who knows where it will lead?
As Stephen Downes said in a recent presentation, online courses are not the answer. How do we know? Because it's not what people want. How do we know? Because, when people want to know something, it's not what they do.
The intended end-users of my current project are harassed managers within a group of business units who have to deal with a fairly large chunk of devolved HR responsibilities. These are not trained HR professionals - each one has a different background and a different area of expertise. Their people skills vary enormously from one to the next. There is a Group HR department, but the aim is for these professionals to add value to the HR practices of the organisation, rather than dealing with the nuts and bolts of the day to day issues like maternity leave applications, hiring and firing, performance management and so on.
So how do we support these managers so that they don't wind up on the phone to HR every few minutes? Well, if Barbara Manager has someone standing in front of her, red-faced and furious, claiming to have been subjected to on-going gender discrimination, she is not going to sign up for an e-learning programme to learn how to deal with it. What is she going to do?
- If we're honest, she's most probably going to call HR. It's the kneejerk reaction.
- She could ask a colleague - either over the phone or in person
- She might Google it (I know, I know - just bear with me, okay?)
Calling HR
We have to face the fact that, for the foreseeable future, most people are going to see this as the easiest option. Let someone else do the thinking and just tell me what to do - Barbara might even have her HR contact on speeddial. What alternatives might that "someone else" suggest for next time? And there will be a next time. One thing we do know is that whatever the HR contact tells her, Barbara is going to put it into practice and forget it - she has enough on her plate without trying to remember the ramifications of an exceptional situation.
Whatever it is, it is going to have to deliver the goods. The answer/information must be:
- easy to find
- relevant (and in a narrow, specific sense - not some broad spectrum panacea)
- found quickly
This form of learning constitutes a whopping proportion of work-based learning. If memory serves, some studies place the figure at 70% (although, of course, I couldn't track any down today!). Much like phoning HR, this relieves Barbara of the need to find time in her overcrowded schedule to figure it out for herself. Kenneth will tell her how it is done.
A lot will depend on what sort of a coach Kenneth is. If he simply tells her the answer, the single piece of information Barbara will remember if this happens is "Kenneth knows". Next time, she will ask Kenneth again.
If, however, Kenneth showed her how to find the answer for herself, perhaps next time she would try that instead. Of course, this is contingent upon the answer being:
- easy to find
- relevant
- found quickly
Okay, this was a bit of a silly example. What possible use could it be to Barbara in Britain to learn how a discrimination/harassment situation is handled in Japan?
But hang on. Let's look at this a different way. What if Barbara wants to know how to apply for permanent residence in the UK? Increasingly evidence indicates that Googling it is right up there. It's what people do.
So how's about we create some kind of in-house Google-type-thing where Barbara can search for the company policy on grievances, the correct grievance procedure, the forms she needs, hints and tips and some online learning to support her through the process? What if that online learning was not a linear course, but a collection of just-in-time pages that she can dip in and out of as the whim takes her? What if there were to be a library of case studies where she could find out what someone else did in a similar situation?
What if the HR contact sent her the URL to try next time. What if Kenneth showed her how to use this facility? What if the information contained in the resource were (you guessed it):
- easy to find
- relevant
- found within a short space of time
What if Barbara could contribute to the resource? What if she could cite the example of gender discrimination with the boot on the other foot: how this member of her staff had complained about repeated assertions that he was not being able to multi-task "because he was a bloke". This might be relatively new and rather unusual territory, but someone else is bound to encounter it sooner or later, and Barbara's experience might prove handy.
The beauty is that Barbara doesn't have to remember the whole process associated with discrimination, harassment, etc. She just has to know where to find it. In fact, it would be better if she didn't remember it. Her memory may be faulty. The process may change as legislation is introduced.
In this day and age, she can ill afford not to adhere to current policy, to follow current procedure. The risk of expensive litigation is high and growing. Next time, when she conducts her search, the results may be different from last time, but they will be current.
I'm liking this.
(By the way, if you picked up on the Kenneth and Barbara/Ken and Barbie connection, well done! I'd like to point out, however, that this was not a case of gender stereotyping - those are my parents' names. It's a bit of a family joke, as you can probably imagine)
Wednesday, April 26, 2006
ICT use by school children
An interesting post on Derek’s blog. I have had some exposure to the issue of ICT in schools and find that teachers constantly raise the argument that many children do not have access to computers/the Internet at home. This would seem to be at odds with the findings of this research.
Off the top of my head, this could mean one of two things (although there are no doubt other possibilities I haven’t thought of):
- the research is inaccurate due to an unreliable sample group, or
- it’s time we stopped hiding behind this excuse and identified the real problem
Teachers have not had training in developing these uses of ICT, therefore do not have extensive understanding of what this might involve and are fearful about the potential impact on their time of home-school ICT links.
Our lives in the role of technology
Via a link from Vicki’s blog, I found Marshall Kirkpatrick’s email interview with Gina Trapani (Lifehacker) about the impact of technology on our lives and providing some perspective on blogging. Like Gina, “I'm a firm believer in technology as an enabling force for any individual or organization.” Like her I have worked for an organisation where technology has taken over “to the point where you'd instant message the person that sat next to you on your computer instead of turning your head and talking aloud” although in my case it was a way of avoiding tension in relationships. She refers to a low-tech solution using post its, flags, drawing pins and the like, that worked for everyone and says, “That was a big lesson for me - software doesn't always solve the problem”. I totally agree! Not to sound one-uppish, but I learned this lesson some time ago. These are some examples of how I’ve opted for a low-tech solution that has worked better than hi-tech might have done.
A couple of years back, I went for a job interview for an IT trainer role. I was asked to deliver a 10 minute presentation about myself, which obviously served the dual purpose of giving them background about me and demonstrating my presentation skills. I just knew that all the other candidates would go with PowerPoint and, while I think it’s a wonderful package, I believe that death by PowerPoint is an increasing danger. Instead, I printed out loads of images on A4 paper that represented my life: a picture of the map of
For almost two decades I taught people how to use spreadsheets, first Lotus, and then Excel as the balance of market-share shifted. The bulk of my training was delivered to new or low-end users and almost universally, I found that they had a problem grasping the concept of relative and absolute references. Once I had given an introductory example to set the scene, I would switch off the plasma screen and step away from the computer. I then used to explain the concept by means of an allegory about gorgeous drum majorettes or 3 year-old ballet dancers giving a concert (depending on the demographics of the group). I won’t try to explain how it worked, but it always involved me deliberately making a complete clot of myself doing an imitation of one of those groups of people. Every teacher/trainer knows the joy of that moment when you see the light go on in the face of the learner. The ridiculous little “dance” seldom failed to herald that moment. Not to mention having everyone in stitches!
Another point in Gina’s input that I found myself nodding as I read was that “constant connectivity and an interrupt-driven existence can really degrade people's morale and productivity levels.” Yesterday I read a post from Kathy Sierra that overlapped with this sort of thinking – touching on how the television can sap us of energy. We think we’re too tired to do anything but watch telly, but in fact, we’re tired because we do nothing but watch telly! I can remember when my grandfather used to resent the intrusion of the phone ringing at an inconvenient moment - it really riled him. His indignation made such an impact on me that I now have a rule at home that we leave the answering machine to pick up calls during meals.
Nowadays, it’s not just in our homes, and it’s not just the phone. Mobile technology means we can be reached anywhere, anytime by phone, email, fax. We can carry our offices with us, and can be about our business 24/7. Even being on holiday abroad is no guarantee of escape – and believe me, I have first hand experience of this!
Having Outlook (or whatever you use instead) open as you work can totally hijack your plan for the day, as you find yourself compelled to attend to the mounting number of little red exclamation marks, rather than addressing the issues on your to do list. It has the potential to put one into the passenger’s seat of one’s own life. If that’s not demoralising, I don’t know what is! There is a creeping apathy that results from this: a kind of “whatever” attitude of someone who feels powerless to direct their own path.
To end on a slightly more upbeat note, there was one final point in the exchange that I found interesting: “The important thing to remember is a blog is like a garden - it needs constant tending and watering.” Nice thought.
Monday, April 24, 2006
Multisensory learning
I'm not sure if bloggers will be able to follow this link to an interesting article by Martin Shovel of CreativityWorks, published in Training Zone. It might require registration... I forget.
However, there are some interesting points I'd like to tease out:
Perhaps trainers and teachers could learn some useful lessons about multi-sensory learning from the world of advertising. There's almost always a strong synaesthetic dimension to persuasive advertising campaigns.
The article is promoting the use of cartooning for teaching and learning:
The graphic simplicity and directness of cartoons can be used to evoke smells, sounds, feelings and tastes, as well as the emotions that accompany them.
It's a strong argument and I can see that it can prove a very useful learning tool. However, why stop at evoking sounds, smells etc. Why can we not use the real thing? Or somehow harness the power of these senses to improve retention? Vicki Davis (Coolcat teacher) refers to this in point 8 of her typology of cognitive pleasures in the classroom:
Involve all of the senses: touch, sight, hearing, and yes, even taste and smell. Do you know how I teach the students to participate in Socratic discussions. (Some of you will hate this and criticize me greatly!) I use food...Many of our best class discussions are on the days we have candy. It's not a big piece, sometimes Starbursts, sometimes chocolate.
How many of us are transported back to a given moment in our lives by a smell, a sight, a sound, a taste, a touch sensation? For me, there is a certain smell that transports me back to the time I saw the (dreadful) movie Jesus of Nazareth when I was 15. For my husband, the smell of birch and/or beech trees transports him back to the tiny island off the coast of Sweden where he spent idyllic childhood summer holidays with his grandfather.
We encounter the notion in literature and movies all the time - sadly usually in connection with something awful. For Matt Freeman, hero of the Power of Five series by Anthony Horowitz, his telekinetic/precognitive ability is always accompanied by the smell of burning toast: the first time it manifested, his mother had just burnt the breakfast toast.
Works of fiction have also explored the deliberate and callous harnessing of this concept: River, in Serenity turns from a docile, somewhat unbalanced teenager into a veritable killing machine thanks to some subliminal messaging; for Danny in Unleashed (aka Danny the Dog) the removal of his dog collar has much the same result.
But sensory conditioning goes back a long way: think Pavlov and his dog. Just because we've moved on from behaviourism as a viable teaching method, does this mean that we are done with fostering connections between information and the senses?
If it involves chocolate, improves retention and enhances the level of learning, I certainly hope not!
Wednesday, April 19, 2006
Thursday, April 13, 2006
Collaboration makes waves
We will focus on technologies that meet the demand for personalised media. It is a trend we are already seeing with the growth of blogs, podcasts and peer-to-peer networks in which individuals and small content providers can share information, in some cases supplanting the mass media.So says Arturo Azcorra, technical co-ordinator of the E-NEXT project. He was talking about planned intensive research over the next three years, meeting the rapidly changing demands of consumers. His expectation is a radical impact on the audiovisual sector. This appeared on my radar via this post from IST Results.
This project is being funded by the European Commission’s IST programme. According to IST Results, it "has spurred cooperation on developing new technologies in areas such as mobile and ambient networking, self-aware and service-aware networking and content distribution".
E-NEXT runs an annual conference called CoNEXT which "is fast becoming a major annual forum for debate and information exchange between researchers from Europe, the United States and Asia on future networking technologies".
It's gratifying to see that we (bloggers, that is) are part of something that is influencing future planning on such a huge scale.
Storming the formal education fort
Informal learning is at an interesting stage in its development. Attitudes towards it appear to be riddled with inconsistency and hypocrisy. Employers appear to be actively encouraging staff to engage with informal learning as part of their CPD - some have even developed systems for tracking this. However, when it comes to recruiting new staff, there still seems to be a strong leaning towards formal education. If I take the cynical view, this tells me that they don't really place great value on informal learning - it's just a way to avoid the expense of having staff enrolling on formal learning programmes and taking study leave to complete the necessary assignments and pass the exams.
And educational institutions seem married to the view that only formal learning can be accredited towards formal qualifications. I have posted about this before. In the interests of my own marketability, I have been looking to formalise my learning. To add the right letters behind my name and gain the right piece of paper to wave at interviews. I have spent the past 20 years engaged in informal learning of one sort or another, while gaining a wealth of experience in my field, both first hand and vicarious, but it seems I can only prove that I have learnt something by having someone else say so.
Because I will need to study on a part-time/distance basis, any qualification is going to take a long old time to achieve. I don't fancy the idea of putting in 6 or so years towards a bachelor's degree, when I'm confident that my informal learning has taken me beyond that level already. I had a glimmer of hope last week, when I spoke to a counsellor who gave me to understand that I could embark on a master's degree course. I would need to deliver written material and a presentation to some sort of board to convince them that I was, what... smart enough? Well informed enough? Committed enough? To take on post graduate study. That didn't seem to be a problem.
Later in the week, the goal posts moved, and it seemed I would first have to do a crash course bachelor's degree part time over two years. Sigh. Okay. Two years isn't forever. I can manage that.
Then the goal posts moved again, and it seemed I would have to the second year of a Cert. Ed. first. Furthermore, I would need to do a crash course before being allowed onto that, because I completed the first year of my Cert Ed more than three years ago. Deeper sigh. Okay. I can handle that, too.
Then the camel's back quietly broke, with no more sound or fanfare than a popped soap bubble. In order to complete the second year, I would need to teach 120 hours within a formal learning institution. I am an instructional designer for a private sector commercial organisation. Before that, I was classroom based, yes, but still within a commercial organisation. It is several years since I set foot in a formal learning institution.
By this time, my enquiry had been passed along to a few different people. I sent an email to the latest of these to find out if there was any way for someone who is not classroom-based to complete this course. Silence. Up until that moment, the responses had been very quick, even when my enquiry had been passed along the line (again). This time... nothing - not even a "Sorry, but no."
The drawbridge is up. You shall not pass. Deepest sigh.
Wednesday, April 12, 2006
Learning objects or not
Here is a post from Rob Reynolds of Explanazine, entering in to the debate about the appropriateness of learning objects. This is a discussion that shuttled back and forth between the various members of my team at work some months ago. While I appreciate Rob's excellent analogy, and agree with it on the one hand, as a learning designer I find it difficult to conceive of learning with no object.
I have a particular problem with the thought of hard skills/technical subjects losing their learning objects. I know that assessment is another hotbed at the moment, but I'm not sure how one would assess competency without predefined learning objects. And I remain adamant that things like driving, building, demolition, surgery should retain a process of objective assessment against a predetermined (regularly revised) set of performance criteria. There is just no way I want my house built or my surgery performed by someone who hasn't jumped through that hoop. Try as I might, I can't shake the old fashioned view on that score!
However, I agree that learning - both theoretical and practical - is a journey rather than a destination, and no-one has ever truly arrived. IMHO, there should be an expectation that a person will spend a certain percentage of their time on CPD, and an accountability for this should form part of the review process. Skills degradation is all too real - particularly for overworked professionals.
Over the past few years, the term "lifelong learning" has moved from the realms of the learning professional into general usage. Research supports the idea that older people who continue to engage in mental challenges can retain a greater measure of the mental acuity and reduce the risk of dementia - something BUPA made much of in an ad campagin a couple of years back. In fact, for many of us the line between life and learning has become so blurred that lifelong learning is pretty much a tautology - a bit like lifelong communicating, if not yet quite as self-evident as lifelong breathing. And yet there are still many professionals out there whose workload and additional commitments simply do not allow the time for work-related learning. Our challenge as learning professionals is to reach these people. To make learning accessible even to them.
Hopefully ubiquitous learning will begin to do the trick - taking the learning to the people, rather than bringing the people to the learning. While I'm still not sure how we would design learning material with no learning object, the gradual demise of the online course, and the move towards ever smaller JIT granules of information delivered anywhere, anytime will hopefully reach an ever widening audience. Of course, the words "horse" and "water" spring to mind here: you can take the horse to water, you can even take water to the horse, but if the horse is particularly disinclined (or ornery, as my American friends might say)...
At this point, this is where affective change is required. The issue of accountability for CPD that I mentioned earlier. This approach requires the simple matter of changing the way the whole commercial world approaches performance appraisals.
Hmm. Well that's my week planned!
If only...
Friday, April 07, 2006
Working smarter - groan!
"Speeding things up can only work for so long. Instead, we need to think about helping students to work smarter, not faster. There is an alternative to speeding things up. It’s the smarter solution—one that helps students develop the skills and understandings they need to find, process, and use information effectively. This smarter solution focuses on process as well as content. Some people call this smarter solution information literacy or information skills instruction."This quote comes from the Big6 skills overview via George Siemens weekly elearnspace summary email (click link to subscribe).
When I first entered the world of learning on the provider side of the equation, I worked for AdvTech, a subsidiary of a US company called Applied Learning. While AdvTech still exists, I have been unable to establish whether it still forms part of the Applied Learning Group, or, indeed whether Applied Learning still even exists as an entity (let's face it: googling Applied Learning is going to return too many hits to sift through!).
AdvTech had a division that supplied all manner of training videos, and my familiarity with names such as Peters, de Bono et al, dates back to then - downtime was spent wading through great wadges of video material in order to become familiar with it. I lost ccount of the number of times the speaker would tell me to work smarter, not harder. The trouble is, none of them ever told me how!
What the heck does it mean, anyway, to "work smarter"? Apart from being appalling grammar, it strikes me as being one of those glib sayings that are designed to make a person feel inadequate. They come and go, these phrases, don't they? I can remember a time when a managers would have a little plaque on the desk, with the word "Thimk" on it. I asked about it once - was it an anagram? Apparently not. It seems it had to do with not always making assumptions. The tendency being to see the word and assume that it said "think". But you were supposed to think, to pay attention to the details, to notice that not everything was as it seemed. However, since the very first thing I noticed about the word was the fact that it was misspelt, it was something of a damp squibb.
Now it's not working harder that's the problem, it's working faster, according to Big6, but the solution is still to work smarter, apparently. It is nearly 20 years since I first heard the phrase, and I have come a long way since then, but I still feel I want to stand up and shout, "What the heck does it mean?!" To be fair, there is an attempt to explain the "smarter solution", here:
one that helps students develop the skills and understandings they need to find, process, and use information effectivelyHowever, until someone can teach people the art of working smarter, for me it will remain one of those rah-rah catch phrases that should be consigned to world of Honest Abe's Used Car Sales.
Sorry, but there it is. Bah humbug.
Thursday, April 06, 2006
Thoughts on the learning journey and the role of design
George Siemens' post on his Connectivism Blog yesterday was one I read with interest. Most of what he says is revisiting past territory. A few points I picked out of the post:
- "Any long term change in our formal learning institutions will be bottom up"
- Confusion is not a bad thing - in fact, it leads to learning
- Learners retain content that has value to them
- Learners are not containers to be filled
- Learning can be guided but not managed
One point he made, though, was around the responsibility of the designer in the whole process. He contends that "the task of design is to move people towards intended targets". That learning is as much a function of life as breathing and that people learn regardless of the quality of design. Perhaps it's because I'm a designer, but I'm not so sure about that second bit. My own earlier post about "learning by meandering" notwithstanding, if I need something in a hurry, I have no patience with learning material that doesn't deliver in short order. If one resource doesn't provide it quickly and intuitively, I will meander off elsewhere and try again. For me, that's the difference that design makes. If learning material is well designed, it will spit out my required piece of knowledge/information toot sweet. So, yes, I will learn what I want to know in spite of poor design, but I will learn it from the better design. Poor design will not only not move me towards my intended target, it will move me away from the learning resource itself... a bit of a waste, really.
Learning by meandering
I like the Lone Star Learning posts on Xplanazine, they're so... I don't know... readable. Rob Reynolds obviously likes to tell stories, and I like to read them, so we're a good combination. I like the fact that I can often get from start to finish in one of his posts without having to dive off after some or other link to get the context.
This one talks about the different ways people navigate around the web, using navigating around towns as an allegory. As the reigning world champion in the art of getting lost, I found myself chuckling my way through his post. Don't get me wrong: I am an ace navigator, as long as someone else is driving. I am also pretty good at finding a place if I have been given a faultless set of directions. However...
The road by which I currently leave town on my way home from work is closed for repairs. So I tried to leave by an alternative route the other evening. My drive home usually takes 40 minutes or so. After about half an hour of driving, I was thoroughly lost. I pulled off the road and phoned my husband (let's hear it for mobile phones). "I'm in a farming area on a road called Mill Road, near a place called Thurleigh in - I think - Bedfordshire. Could you look it up on Google Maps (let's hear it for Google Maps) and tell me how to get home?" Of course, being a sensible individual, my husband asked me which direction I was facing. It was completely overcast, and I couldn't see the sun. Ergo, not a clue. After a few minutes, the sun peeped through a break in the clouds and I was able to asertain that I was facing north. Between us, we managed to figure out which way to go and I managed to get home an hour later.
Sometimes my journeys around the www are like this. Sometimes I know where I'm going (Google Maps, for example) and I go there, find what I want and get on with my life. Then there are other times. I'll start off reading a post on one of my subscription blogs. There will be mention of something/someone I haven't encountered before. So I follow the link to that post/person. Once there, I'll find some interesting tidbit of news, and follow the link to find out more about that. An hour later, I have no idea how I got where I am and without the wonderful "back" icon, would have no chance of finding my way back.
Perhaps this kind of learning is called serendipity (I think I read that somewhere on one of meanders through cyberspace), but, tipping my hat to the old MBWA (management by walking around), I think it should be called LBWA or LBM - learning by meandering..
Tuesday, April 04, 2006
Stephen Downes re-appears for a moment... with a gem!
A lot of OLDaily bypassed my little brain. But, when Stephen gives talks like this, I can understand, I can keep up.
He's been off visiting the Magdalene Islands, doing a spot of navel gazing: a kind of why do I do what I do thing. I can understand that - the man's work rate is phenomenal, and it's easy to get so caught up in what we do that we forget why we do it.
Net result? His epiphany is that the notion of "It's not about the technology, it's about the learning" is only half right. His view is that it's not about the learning either. It's about the pursuit of happiness - a good, meaningful life. The test of whether our education system is not whether people have learned certain things, but about whether they are happy and fulfilled.
“We need a system that is optimized toward slotting in new pieces as they become available, not as an after-thought or an add-on, but as a fundamental characteristic of the system.”
This brings us to the learning network, where learning becomes resource-based, rather than institution-based; where it is about the content, rather than the organization; where it is web-based and aggregated rather than product-based and pre-packaged; where e-learning becomes a conversation in which learners are engaged.
Thanks to web 2.0 (e-Learning 2.0, whatever), the web is no longer a place where people go to consume media, it is a place people go to do things. As educators, we need not to see ourselves as delivering a service but as enabling people to deliver a service themselves. The web is now the platform rather than the medium.
I guess this made me sit up and take notice because it is exactly what I am aiming for on a current project. I'm not sure how I'm going to achieve it, but I'm even more determined to give it my best shot!
Universal Design for Learning
Courtesy of Barbara Ganley, I found myself visiting CAST's (Center for Applied Special Technology) website this morning. My curiosity was piqued by the notion of Universal Design. According to their site:
Erm... no prizes for guessing that the key lies in the word multiple. One of my drivers is to try to find ways to engage the widest spectrum of learners on a variety of different bases. The challenge is to design learning material in such a way as to cater to the adherents of both push and pull learning. To the linear learning programme as well as to the quick-and-dirty emergency requirement.Universal Design for Learning calls for ...
- Multiple means of representation, to give learners various ways of acquiring information and knowledge,
- Multiple means of expression, to provide learners alternatives for demonstrating what they know,
- Multiple means of engagement, to tap into learners' interests, offer appropriate challenges, and increase motivation.
While the learning objectives remain the same, it's the structure of the learning that has to change. The additional work that goes into providing multiple routes through the same maze, including shortcuts and wild rides - that's what's exercising me, right now!
Keeping them interested
Kathy Sierra can always be depended upon to call things as they are, and to cut to the chase. This podcast is a gauntlet if ever I saw one. Particularly to designers of learning materials.
The core message is:
- Devise rewards
- Offer them often
- Move users on to the next level and the next reward
