On stating the bleedin' obvious

One of the criticisms of my (ahem) academic writing, is that I made (make?) too many assumptions on the part of my readers. My course supervisor once asked me "Why are you so reluctant to state the obvious?"

To me the answer is: because it is obvious. If it is obvious, why do I need to say it? Why do I need to sacrifice part of my precious word count saying something well-duh-ish?

Of course, the response to that is "Because it's obvious to you. It might not be obvious to your reader."

I always took the view that, if you're reading this paper, you have a level of interest in this field. This is not likely to be the first paper you ever read on the subject. Of course, if the paper is electronic, you can include links to definitions and explanations, without having to sacrifice word count. But when it's an old fashioned paper-based submission...

"Just pretend I don't know anything at all," they told me, "and write from that standpoint."

But that's nonsense too, surely? If I assume you know nothing at all, I have to start by explaining the basic concepts to you, such as what workplace learning is and why we do it... before I've even got halfway through that, I've used up my word count.

So I must assume you know something. The trick is knowing where to draw that line.

This is a challenge facing learning designers, too. Do we start by covering the basics? Do we assume that the learner knows the basics?

During my years as a classroom based trainer, this was always the balancing act. Where do I start from? What if one person in the class doesn't know the basics, and everyone else does? What then? All the years I taught spreadsheets, I would find myself also teaching basic maths. Because it's pointless learning about formulas if you don't know how to string together a mathematical sentence. And almost without fail, the ability to construct a mathematical sentence was conspicuous by its absence. I could probably teach the BODMAS rule in my sleep!

Ah. Did you spot what I just did there? I included a link to an explanation of what the BODMAS rule is. If you already know, you don't have to follow it. But if you wondered what I was blethering about, you could follow the link and bring yourself up to speed.

This is one of the things I like about designing online learning resources. You don't have to tell people stuff they might already know! You can include a link and let them choose.

Of course, many is the traditional e-learning designer who will trap that poor learner in a tunnel of back and next buttons and lash them with information they already know, holding all the 'good stuff' to the end... only to be seen when they have jumped through the requisite hoops.

I find the whole collaborative-pull learning such a fantastic fit, here. You can look things up when you need to. If you find that there is no definition/explanation/demonstration of the thing you're after in your organisation's learning space, you can track one down elsewhere and add a link to it for the next person. Or you can create one yourself as you learn-by-experimenting how it's done. People don't need to waste their time sitting through a whole day of stuff they already know, or to trudge through page after page of elearning that adds no value to their lives.

The bleedin' obvious can be stated, but on an optional basis... and everyone is catered for. What's not to like?

Of course, none of this is going to turn me into a brilliant academic writer as long as paper-based submissions are required!

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!!!"

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?

The conversation

Some time back, one of my lecturers referred to academic writing as a conversation. She was giving us hints an tips on how to write critical reviews at the time. She explained that no-one ever expects to have the last word or to write The Definitive Piece on a subject, but that each person is adding to the sum of material available on a topic, inviting response from others in the field. She spoke for some time, using words like "conversation" and "discourse" liberally.

This stuck with me, and, when we came to think about our dissertation topics, I came back to these words. You see I like conversation. Those who know me in a face to face capacity tend to describe me using words like chatterbox and motormouth. What they less often appreciate is that I listen enthusiastically and rapaciously as well, and what they relate to me will become part of my portfolio of knowledge, to reappear in a later conversation with someone else. I quite often say things that are aimed at eliciting a response of some kind. I don't mind being disagreed with and set right, just TALK TO ME! I can't learn anything from (or about) people who don't talk.

The trouble with the conversation in its academic format, as I see it, is that it's rather like a conversation between Ents. Any other sad Tolkien bores out there will remember that Treebeard says at one point (in both the book and the remarkably faithful movie) "it takes a very long time to say anything in (Entish), because we do not say anything in it, unless it is worth taking a long time to say, and to listen to."

The academic conversation/discourse is like a series of long, ponderous monologues. Of course, the fact that it can take anything up to two years for an article to be published once it has been accepted by a print publication does nothing to speed things up.

I completely sympathise with the hobbits Merry and Pippin whose frustration knows no bounds when it takes the Ents several days of their discourse to decide that hobbits are not orcs. The poor hobbits are almost hopping from foot to foot with impatience because the Ents have not even touched on what they consider to be far more important matters.

Like Merry and Pippin, I feel small alongside the profound minds that turn out the academic writings I encounter during my research. Like them, I want to interrupt. I want to say, "But what about..?" The only trouble is that, to enter that conversation, I have to observe its rules and learn the language. My but-what-abouts will take two years to appear in print, by which time, other things will have captured my attention. I can almost hear them say it: "Now, now, don't be hasty little Hobbit..."

But there is another conversation going on. One that is far more suited to my impatient, pondskater nature. And that is this one.

You don't have to be an Ent to participate in this conversation. You can be a hobbit, or a man. You can be an orc or an elf. You can be Gandalf or Sauron himself. It doesn't matter. It's open to everyone. If you are an Ent and you want to take two years to think about what you're going to say before you say it. You go right ahead and do that (just don't expect the conversation or the audience still to be in the same place when you get around to it).

So, over here, there is "yes" and "no" and "I agree" and "don't be daft". And over there, there is "hoom" and "A-lalla-lalla-rumba-kamanda-lindor-burúmë".

It's a bit like the difference between playing Scrabble face to face and playing Scrabulous online. But, just as I have learned to do and enjoy both of those things, the challenge for me now is to figure out how to "do and enjoy" the academic approach to the concept of discourse and conversation, so that I can hand in a decent dissertation!

The fact that I have chosen to explore the impact of the use of social media on my professional practice puts me in a tricky position. How do you explain crackle and snap of the speed-of-light, open to all, global conversation using language that "takes a very long time to say anything in it, because we do not say anything in it, unless it is worth taking a long time to say, and to listen to"?

I feel as if I have to deliver live commentary at Wimbledon in an imitation of the style of a medieval balladeer!

Dissertation other colours

Apologies for the title - its a rather trite reference to my post called Dissertation blues, and it serves as a sequel/rebuttal. To be honest, this post belongs more on my Ardent Student blog, but the edublogs server seems to be out to lunch today and I need to get this done so that I can move on with other stuff, so here goes:

I attended my first meeting with my dissertation supervisor on Monday. We had two items to discuss, since he is also my tutor for an independent studies module. The first discussion went fairly seamlessly - especially since he advised me not to get too hung up on the whole peer-reviewed reference thing, that professional journals would do just as well (terms and conditions apply).

Having got the independent studies module out of the way, we turned our attention to the dissertation. I explained what I was hoping to cover, we discussed the question that would form the title of the work and then I dropped my bombshell. I mentioned that I was hoping to submit the dissertation in the form of a wiki.

His initial response was a head-in-hands "Gordon Bennett!" (which, for those outside the UK, is a substitute expletive/blasphemy along the lines of "jumpin' Jehosaphat"). His recovery was pretty immediate, to give him his due. He explained, holding a up a beautifully hardbound A4 book with gold lettering, that "this" was what the university tended to want.

I opened my mouth, but he stalled me with, "However..."

I had been thinking about this for some time and had all my reasons, arguments and justifications backed up in an assembly line, ready to be trotted out. As it turned out, most of them were unnecessary, he was tasting the idea and developing a liking for it.

His thinking out loud went something like this:

You're going to be writing about the use of social media, so it makes sense to use social media. After all, if you were getting an MA in art, you might present a sculpture, or in music, you might perform an original composition. Why should everything always be vanilla? No. We are aiming to accommodate a wider range of student submissions. Why shouldn't you be allowed to submit something that works for you? This makes sense.

Since he would be one of the people marking it, we knew that the skills existed in-house and we could think of another person with the skills to be the second marker.

We discussed the fact that a wiki is by definition a community project and an MA dissertation is most decidedly an individual effort. Potentially, what I will have to do is submit as the dissertation what would be the straw man for a wiki. Who knows, once it's submitted, I might throw it open and make it a proper wiki...

Anyhoo, I left the meeting feeling far more positive than I had expected. Of course, because it represents such a break with tradition for the university, he is going to have to seek advice/approval on the matter, but, by the end, he seemed as positive about the idea as he had initially been negative. At least he didn't turn me down out of hand, and I feel confident that he will fight my corner.

One thing I know: if I am to be the guinea pig, I had better submit a kick-*ss dissertation or the naysayers in the faculty will have grist for the "I told you so" mill and poor John's butt will be in a sling.

And I have to work out the hows, wheres and whys of hosting. Public domain is a must, but the university needs to have unfettered access. And what do I do to guarantee against the host server crashing or the piece getting corrupted?

What have I let myself in for? My brain hurts!

Academic writing blues

I am experiencing enormous frustrations with the constraints of academic writing. See my Ardent Student post on this. I would love to hear from others as to how you've coped with this. Doug? Stephen? George? You guys are so much further down the road than me, how did you get there without being stifled?