Brain Rules and presentations

I've read Dr. John Medina's brain rules book and I have subscribed to both his Facebook page and his blog. The book is a very readable review of what we know about the brain, how it functions, and its impact on learning. The following slideshow was created by Garr Reynolds who publishes the Presentation Zen blog and it expertly captures three critical rules outlined by Dr. Medina in his book.

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Automobiles and Learning Technology

In the past year I have become a big fan of the BBC television series Top Gear. For those of you who have not seen the show, it is a odd mix of British slapstick humor and reviews of the creme de le creme of automotive engineering. I'd like to share a 10-minute clip from the show in which two of the hosts look at the evolution of the driver's controls.

Now, what you may ask does this have with learning technology? I think that what we see happening today with the learning industry trying to work these tools into their offerings is the same as how the automobile industry worked out the details on how the driver controls the vehicle.

The means of working wikis, blogs, and podcasts into a structured learning environment is wide open and will remain so for another 20 or 30 years until the individuals we refer to as digital natives become the majority of decision makers in the corporate world. And then they will find what is the proper means of implementing these technologies in the corporate training world.

In the interim, we digital immigrants need to just keep experimenting with these tools and be prepared to get laughed at by the digital natives as we misuse tools that are ostensibly theirs. It will be through our trial and error

del.icio.us Tags: Web2.0,elearning,learning theories,education

The ultimate act of sportsmanship

This is not totally on subject given that the focus of my blog is about learning and instructional design...well maybe it is.

I came across this story at Neatorama, a general interest blog, but I think it can serve as a learning moment. The lesson to be learned: teamwork can stretch beyond just individuals in your own group. Here are two college sports teams "competing" when an unusual situation drives them together to cooperate for a higher goal. The lead for the ESPN story really tells it all.

Western Oregon senior Sara Tucholsky had never hit a home run in her career. Central Washington senior Mallory Holtman was already her school's career leader in them. But when a twist of fate and a torn knee ligament brought them face to face with each other and face to face with the end of their playing days, they combined on a home run trot that celebrated the collective human spirit far more than individual athletic achievement.

To paraphrase the rest of the story, Tucholsky stumbles rounding 1st base as she is celebrating hitting the first home run of her college career and injures her knee to the point that she cannot stand let alone walk around the bases. Under the rules of the game she would be called "out" by the umpires if her teammates or coaches assist her. The only seeming alternative is to stop the play with her on first base, provide a pinch runner, and continue on with the game. Unfortunately, she would not be credited with a home run. That's when competition took a back seat.

"And right then," [Western Oregon coach Pam] Knox said, "I heard, 'Excuse me, would it be OK if we carried her around and she touched each bag?'"

The voice belonged to Holtman, a four-year starter who owns just about every major offensive record there is to claim in Central Washington's record book. She also is staring down a pair of knee surgeries as soon as the season ends. Her knees ache after every game, but having already used a redshirt season earlier in her career, and ready to move on to graduate school and coaching at Central, she put the operations on hold so as to avoid missing any of her final season. Now, with her own opportunity for a first postseason appearance very much hinging on the outcome of the game -- her final game at home -- she stepped up to help a player she knew only as an opponent for four years.

"Honestly, it's one of those things that I hope anyone would do it for me," Holtman said. "She hit the ball over her fence. She's a senior; it's her last year. … I don't know, it's just one of those things I guess that maybe because compared to everyone on the field at the time, I had been playing longer and knew we could touch her, it was my idea first. But I think anyone who knew that we could touch her would have offered to do it, just because it's the right thing to do. She was obviously in agony."

Holtman and shortstop Liz Wallace lifted Tucholsky off the ground and supported her weight between them as they began a slow trip around the bases, stopping at each one so Tucholsky's left foot could secure her passage onward. Even with Tucholsky feeling the pain of what trainers subsequently came to believe was a torn ACL (she was scheduled for tests to confirm the injury on Monday), the surreal quality of perhaps the longest and most crowded home run trot in the game's history hit all three players.

I truly recommend you read the whole article, its amazing. Education, like almost any other area of human endeavor, has become so competitive that we miss out on the simple truth that we need to help and support one another. I know it sounds hackneyed, but as we develop instruction, especially asynchronous, we need to make sure that there is some sort of helping hand out there that a learner can turn to when they are unclear on something or are frustrated by a problem. This perhaps is the true bonus that Web 2.0 elements have to offer.

ESPN - Central Washington offers the ultimate act of sportsmanship - College Sports

Laptop U: Where No One Looks at the Professor

For some reason I'm in a negative mood about Web 2.0 tools and education. Reading this article posted at Pajamas Media, got me wondering if what is necessary at the primary school level is some form of instruction on showing respect and prioritizing your life. Written by a professor who chooses to be anonymous so that her students don't discover "she is onto them."

I'm in the midst of a brilliant lecture. I'm very well prepared for this class. I have thirty or forty Powerpoint slides that boil down the textbook chapter into handy outlines. I have included outside material that I spent hours finding and scanning. I have even inserted a two minute clip from a news show that someone had uploaded to YouTube. I also genuinely find this topic fascinating, so I'm able to talk passionately about it. I'm pacing and making wild arm movements. I'm wearing a short skirt.

But about half the class isn't staring at the wonder that is me. Their eyes are glued to their computer monitors. There is a background sound of clacked-clack as they transcribe my lecture. At least, that's what they tell me what they're doing. I cant see their monitor screens. Its more likely that they're IM-ing their girlfriends and flirting with boys on MySpace and downloading songs.

Part of me wonders when adults ceded responsibility for how learning should occur to the students. How far does an instructor have to go to keep learners interested in the topic? If learners are allowed to surf the Internet without repercussions in the classroom, how will they respond in the workplace?

I am not arguing that we should tell them to check their laptop at the door, or schools should turn off Internet access in the classroom. But there needs to be some guidance. At the very least we need to re-instill a belief that we should show all people the kind of respect and attentiveness that we would expect from others when we speak.

Or maybe, the lecture hall should become a thing of the past, a quaint anachronism akin to the chalk board and the fountain pen. If lectures can be recorded and streamed, if lecture notes can be posted, and assignments delivered via the class web site why do we need to bring the students together in one room

There are winners and losers with each new technology and maybe, for better or worse, the time of the formal educator, the sage-on-the-stage and the classroom is passing.

del.icio.us Tags: education

Pajamas Media » Blog Archive » Laptop U: Where No One Looks at the Professor

Symantec: Online Security Concerns Growing in the Workplace

I started reading Neil Postman's Technopoly over the weekend in which he presented a  piece from Plato's Phaedrus in which a god named Theuth presented to King Thamus the discovery of letters. Theuth praised his discovery because he said it "will make Egyptians wiser and give them better memories." But Thamus replied

O most ingenious Theuth, the parent or inventor of an art is not always the best judge of the utility or inutility of his own inventions to the users of them. And in this instance, you who are the father of letters, from a paternal love of your own children have been led to attribute to them a quality which they cannot have; for this discovery of yours will create forgetfulness in the learners' souls, because they will not use their memories; they will trust to the external written characters and not remember of themselves. The specific which you have discovered is an aid not to memory, but to reminiscence, and you give your disciples not truth, but only the semblance of truth; they will be hearers of many things and will have learned nothing; they will appear to be omniscient and will generally know nothing; they will be tiresome company, having the show of wisdom without the reality.

Postman presented the piece to note that adoption of any technology, regardless of its potential, is a Faustian bargain in which a sacrifice must be made in return for the power offered by the technology. I offer this up because of the post I read this post on Campus Technology about security concerns surrounding Web 2.0 tools in the workplace.

Symantec has posted a pair of reports that reveal that workers "put themselves at risk whenever they check their MySpace and Facebook pages...all while at the workplace."

Among the key findings in Symantec's "Global Internet Security Threat Report" are some staggering numbers, including the 711,912 new threats discovered in 2007, compared to just 125,243 in 2006. That's an increase of 468 percent.

The report also highlighted several enterprise system weakness trends which are germane to IT pros looking to balance the new work/life spillover in their IT administration space. According to the report, 58 percent of respondent-documented vulnerabilities in the third and fourth quarters of last year affected Web-based software or applications. Of those vulnerabilities, 72 percent were deemed "easily exploitable."

In their second study, Millennial Workforce: IT Risk or Benefit?, Symantec unveils that:

• 66% of millnnials access Facebook/MySpace during work hours
• 75% access their personal webmail accounts
• 46% use IM on the corporate network
• Less than 45% stick to company-issued devices or software

The report then goes on to call for CIOs to study what devices are being used in their organization, what applications are being downloaded,  and to track movement of data and information. Based on this data they need to quantify and remediate the problem.

The bottom line is that in this age corporations need to be extremely sensitive to protecting its proprietary information as well as the information of its clients. At the same time, the Millennial generation is not going to blindly give up the technology it has grown up with. Corporations want to tap into the innovative spirit of the Millennials, but to do so they need to treat them as equals and not as children that should be seen, but not heard.

Symantec suggests that IT needs to educate its audience. "Use logic to communicate the risk, solution and benefit to your employees. Recognize that coaching the millennial workforce is more effective than educating."

I think that last line is the key. Corporations cannot just promulgate policies and post them as .pdfs on the corporate intranet and accept that as job done. Nor can it produce mind-numbing training sessions that basically rehash the policy. If there is going to be a zero-tolerance attitude toward IT security failures there needs to be greater communication and cooperation in developing and enforcing the policies.

del.icio.us Tags: technology

Do you want fries with that philosopher?

This seems to represent the ultimate triumph of capitalism over all other ideologies.

One student took a far more critical view: We the students are the customers, the consumers, the ones who make the choice every day to pay attention or not. I pay approximately $30,000 to go here, whether I text in class or not. Laurence Thomas gets paid whether his students text in class or not. Does he think that this is the first time this has happened on any college campus? Had he acted like nearly 100 percent of the other college professors in this country, he would have shrugged it off and continued with his lecture, which he is getting paid to do. His deterring of the class and exit from the lecture only serves to highlight is own selfishness, as he will get paid while his paying students are having their time and money wasted. He needs to get over himself here.

Call me old-fashioned, but I side with the professor. An education should not be treated as just another throw-away commodity in our society. And a teacher should receive the respect he or she has earned from their scholarly endeavors. Hopefully the student quoted here is not typical. His or her attitude speaks volumes about their attitude towards the class. Of course I think the professor was being a bit childish in walking out on all of his students because of the actions of one or two.

Unfortunately this class is probably a prerequisite for most of these students and they don't really care about the topic. It does speak volumes about the lack of true learning opportunities in a venue in which one person is speaking to hundreds of learners.

If You Text in Class, This Prof Will Leave :: Inside Higher Ed :: Higher Education's Source for News, and Views and Jobs

Help yourself to the elearning buffet

Interesting couple of articles published in the last few days about the future of elearning. On March 11th, the Rapid eLearning Blog wrote a piece called How to Create E-Learning Courses That Don't Waste Your Learner's Time.

In that piece Tom Kuhlmann writes that many learners are taking elearning courses "because they have to, not necessarily because they want to."

For them, it’s a matter of getting in and out quickly and then back to work.  This is not a commentary on the quality of the course or its content.  It’s just that many elearning courses are compulsory and the person taking it isn’t motivated by learning the content.

Those people only want to see the essential information, take the required quiz, and get on with their lives.  They don’t want to be held hostage by a course that has them clicking all over the place.  Tell them what they need to know and let them go.

He then proceeds to offer up a series of recommendations that include creating courses that are not courses and identifying course requests that would really serve a greater purpose as a reference work.

Then today I received an email newsletter from the training zone, a training association based in Great Britain. They published a an article titled: Help yourself to the elearning buffet (free registration is required to view).

This article contends that today's generation is accustomed to networked technology  and "lives its life on the web and has come to expect instant gratification...[they] are less accustomed to traditional methods of training, and prefer to be in control of when and where they consume information. The writer, Julian Dable, a regional manager for Travantis, thinks that, with an appropriate tweaking of how we perceive it, elearning is the solution to meeting the new web generation's needs for information solutions.

Elearning is a perfect balance between traditional learning and self-determined 'quick-fix' internet learning. Readily accessible, expert information from sanctioned subject matter experts is the safest and most practical way of getting information into your employees' hands. These days, widely available authoring software tools put power into the hands of subject matter experts who don't need to be technologically savvy to create training courses. They can integrate the power of multimedia audio and video to create engaging learning. Even better, such tools are easy to learn and the process can be contracted to a matter of hours or days rather than weeks.

His thoughts tend to gravitate toward moving elearning away from the traditional page turner and more towards a two-way communication structure where social frameworks can be built.

Help yourself to the elearning buffet - 19 Mar 2008

del.icio.us Tags: elearning,instructional design

Learning Visions: Accidental Learning

Cammy Bean has a great post about accidental learning. Cammy quotes from Yo-Yo Ma's presentation for NPR:

Every day I make an effort to go toward what I don't understand. This wandering leads to the accidental learning that continually shapes my life.

- Yo-Yo Ma

I've found that I often follow links (not just on the Internet) to discover new things. Just the other day I was listening to Jimmy Buffett's CD Don't Stop the Carnival. It was not a regular music CD, but it seemed to tell a story. So I searched Wikipedia to find out more about it and discovered it is based upon a Herman Wouk book by the same name. Buffett and Wouk colloborated on turning it into a musical

Normally I would not think about reading a Herman Wouk book because I am conditioned to think that he writes war stories (Thank you ABC which produced Winds of War and War and Rememberance mini-series.) The only war-related theme in Don't Stop the Carnival occurs at the beginning when it is described how the United States came into possession of the island during World War II.

After that it is the story of the adventures of Norman Paperman, a New York PR man who decides to slow down after he suffers a mild heart attack by running a resort in the Caribbean. I am now deeply engrossed in a book I would not have known even existed if I had not decided to find out the reasoning behind the unusual CD.

Learning Visions: Accidental Learning

The Blogosphere Mapped

Ever wonder about the size of the blogosphere? Are bloggers just talking to themselves? Matthew Hurst of Data Mining put together various maps of the blogosphere. This one shows the blogosphere as a social network. It appeared on Discover magazine's website in April 2007.

As expected the most populous site is the bold white spot marked with the number "1" and represents the political world.

The outlyers represent LiveJournal social networking sites (3), sports blogs (5), and pornography sites (6).

Other maps can be seen at Matt's blog, Data Mining: Mapping the Blogosphere.

del.icio.us Tags: web2.0,social networking,blogs

Recommended Books for Instructional Design

BOOKSTOREAD.COM has compiled a collected list of recommended books on instructional design and technology.

The purpose of the Top Ten Lists is to showcase the bookshelves of leaders in the field. Currently, we are accepting nominations for eminent scholars, theorists, and practitioners in instructional design and technology whom we would like to request that they submit a top ten list of their most influential or important books in the field.

The list is kind of dated (nothing new since 2002), but still a good starting point for individuals interested in pursuing an informal education in instructional design. Hat Tip to John Curry, Ph.D., at EffectiveDesign.Org, for including it amongst his links  this week.

del.icio.us Tags: instructional design,informal learning,learning

Social Media: Reducing friction and establishing a NEW discipline

A fascinating piece on the role of social media (blogs, wikis, twitter, etc.) in the corporate world. Key nugget:

Social media is not so much about direct influence of revenue, but more of a market optimizer - which DOES impact revenue. Current revenue streams AND future opportunities. Essentially social media aids in making markets more efficient with pervasive communication, connectivity and real-time transaction capabilities. Its a fundamental change in market mechanics.

Read it all.

spatially relevant » Blog Archive » Social Media: Reducing friction and establishing a NEW discipline

del.icio.us Tags: socialmedia,social networking

Of Typecasting and Individuality

 

Dear Mr. Vernon,
We accept the fact that we had to sacrifice a whole Saturday in detention for whatever it was that we did wrong. What we did was wrong, but we think you're crazy to make us write an essay writing about who we think we are. What do you care? You see us as you want to see us—in the simplest terms, in the most convenient definitions. You see us as a brain, an athlete, a basket case, a princess, and a criminal. Correct? That's the way we saw each other at 7:00 this morning. We were brainwashed.

From The Breakfast Club
a film by John Hughes

Back in January the weblog Cybernet displayed the image to the right as a Friday fun piece titled: Optical Illusion: Are You Right or Left Brained. The image originally appeared in the Sydney (Australia) Herald Sun in a short article about which side of the brain we rely on. The short article that accompanies the image states:

If clockwise, then you use more of the right side of the brain and vice versa.
Most of us would see the dancer turning anti-clockwise though you can try to focus and change the direction; see if you can do it.

According to this I am extremely right brain dominant as I could only rarely see her move in any other direction than clockwise. About the only time I could see her move in a counterclockwise motion is when I glanced at the image of the corner of my eye without thinking. But can this picture tell the whole story?

Can one picture determine whether you are left-brained or right-brained oriented, I'm not convinced and the more I thought of it the more it seemed to me to be a cute parlor trick and nothing more. As I write this, I'm watching the image out of the corner of my eye and I can see it moving counterclockwise, but as soon as I turn my full attention on it it switches back to going clockwise. I think this may suggest that when I am concentrating on writing my right brain kicks in to organize my thoughts. When my brain is at rest my right side takes over control. But it made me think about the impact on learning. And I did some cursory research.

While we like to see clean black/white solution for these issues, we live in a messy world and while there is extensive research into this phenomena, science is not ready to say that there is a hard and fast drawing of the line regarding brain lateralization.  

But this got me thinking about how we use categories and classifications to simplify our lives even in the realm of learning. There are still raging battles over how people learn.

• Is it sensory-related experience with no thought to internal motivation as the behaviorists believe?
• Should we be treated as biological computers that await to receive data  input by an expert on which we then act as the cognitivists support?
• Do we use data input to reach solutions on how to make sense of the world around us as the constructivists would have us believe?
• Or do we learn best by recognizing that learning operates much like a computer network in that data is received from a variety of sources in a variety of forms and we teach as much as we learn as the connectivists would have us believe?

The passion that arises over these discussions sometimes rise above mere academic debate and harken back to a more clannish response as we take sides in the discussion. Personally, I see some relevance in each. Only the individual who is learning knows what is going on inside his or her head (behaviorism), and if we have no knowledge of a subject then we are certainly filling a void with new data that is provided by an "expert" or someone who proclaims to be an expert (cognitivism).

As this new information is received and processed we usually work to fit it into our existing knowledge base, weighing it against previous information to determine if it augments what we already know or it replaces previous knowledge (constructivism).

Finally, there is no strict separation between learners and teachers - and there never has been. We learn from one another in an ongoing dialog that occurs on a daily basis in our schools, workplace, and our social life as long as we remain open to the idea that we can be taught by anyone (connectivism). And this is probably the biggest impediment we face today.

I am fond of saying to my children that the civilization we claim to see around us is but a thin veneer covering our continued preference for our prehistoric ancestor's clannishness. We find comfort in listening to people who hold similar views as ours; there is safety in numbers.

And every clan had an alpha male or female that the clan looked to for guidance. He or she was the leader and the survival of the clan depended on everyone following the alpha's directions. That is why education has adhered so closely to the sage-on-the-stage approach to teaching. For the clan to survive we must all learn to think as the clan thinks.

So, until we as individuals recognize that there is no one right way of thinking learning will remain stunted by our "simplest terms" and "most convenient definitions."

del.icio.us Tags: learning theories,learning,education,civilization

Technorati Tags: learning theories,education,learning,civilization

Next steps in Read-Write Web

I have to confess that I heard about the dataportability movement a couple months ago, but to be honest I can't really get my head around the concept. I would love to have someone explain this to me in terms I can understand.

The way I perceive it is that in the current environment each read-write web site we wish to participate in requires us to set up an account and generate a profile. The concept here seems to be that once you set up an account at one site you can then take that information to any other site without jumping through the hoops of generating a new profile.

This push seems to be going hand-in-hand with the OpenID concept. This would eliminate the need to actually set up individual user names and passwords for these various sites. I like this concept because it would eliminate the need to try and remember the login data for all my sites after I accidentally clean the cache of my browser. Again, here's a video that explains it well.

del.icio.us Tags: Web2.0,read-write_web

Meeting The Need for On-demand Learning - Webinar

Outstart is sponsoring a one-hour webinar by Chris Howard of Bersin & Associates on March 25, 2008 at 1:30 pm titled Meeting the Demand for "Learning On-Demand. The registration page describes the webinar as follows:

As companies move from course-centric learning to learning on-demand, the role of the corporate training department must change. This presentation will discuss the organizational changes, tools, best-practice processes, and resources required to support an on-demand model. Chris Howard of Bersin & Associates will further discuss how to leverage existing content and the types of standards and templates that work best.
Discussion includes:

• Learning for the new workforce: differences in learning and approaches between traditionalists, Boomers, GenX, and Millenials
• What will go away and why
• What's becoming hot & why you should care

Registered attendees will receive Bersin’s Integrating Learning Into the Enterprise Portal Research Paper, compliments of OutStart.

The myth of Web 2.0 democracy

I think that those of us who are supporters and promoters of Web 2.0 tools--such as wikis, blogs (.pdf), and social bookmarking--have known in the back of our mind that there is always a small cadre of people who do most of the work on these sites. Everyone else just kind of look on and occasionally tweak something posted by someone else.  Here's how Chris Wilson of Slate Magazine put it in his online article, Digg, Wikipedia, and the myth of Web 2.0 democracy describes it.

Social-media sites like Wikipedia and Digg are celebrated as shining examples of Web democracy, places built by millions of Web users who all act as writers, editors, and voters. In reality, a small number of people are running the show. According to researchers in Palo Alto, 1 percent of Wikipedia users are responsible for about half of the site's edits. The site also deploys bots--supervised by a special caste of devoted users--that help standardize format, prevent vandalism, and root out folks who flood the site with obscenities. This is not the wisdom of the crowd. This is the wisdom of the chaperones.

His source is Ed Chi, a research scientist at Palo Alto Research Center's (PARC) User Interface Research Group. In a 2006 paper, titled Power of the Few vs. Wisdom of the Crowd: Wikipedia and the Rise of the Bourgeoisie, Chi, along with Aniket Kittur and Todd Mytkowicz analyzed the content creation and editing of Wikipedia. In a follow-up evaluation of the data, Chi noted on the PARC blog that there appeared to be at any given moment in time, a few user are a lot more active than the rest of the population, but there is a long tail of other users who are contributing to the effort.

When we are out selling these concepts to our clients we need to be sure to impress upon them that there is going to have to be a solid cadre of individuals within their workplace that will take the lead in populating and editing these tools. Management cannot expect all workers to flock to the site and enter data.

It is more likely that they will take a look at what a few people add to the database of information. If the content is easily accessible and is presented in a readable user-friendly format they may review it and modify it slightly. If hash is presented -- poorly structured wikis, social bookmarks that have no coherent folksonomy -- then the masses will probably ignore the content and continue to rely on other sources of information within the workplace.

A River Runs Through It

For almost an hour today I sat as my workgroup discussed m-learning and read-write web tools and my brain flashed back to a thought I had about a week ago. A week ago I had one of those moments where my mind wanted to pursue about five different avenues of exploration all at once. As I fretted over which avenue to pursue first, it hit me that there was no way I could pursue all of my choices at once and I need to prioritize.

Initially I was depressed because all of these projects:

converting home video to DVD creating a vodcast about the value of using Windows Live Meeting reading the book Gut Feelings maintain my blogging at reading other blogs

 

These were all things I wanted to do. But with work and family responsibilities that need to be managed, as well as a need for some downtime other than when I sleep, there was no way that I could manage it all. Besides vodcasting, I am interested in the entire broad spectrum of read-write web elements. But the sheer breadth of that topic and the virtual whip-lash I experienced as we bounced back and forth once again led me to dispair my lack of time to delve into it all.

That was until I followed Stephen Downe's post, A Guide for the Overwhelmed, Part 2 - It's a River, Not a Reservoir, to Rob Wall's post of the same name. Rob's post made me feel better. Especially this nugget:

The number and diversity of applications are increasing far faster than I am able to learn about them, let alone mastering them. But that’s not a problem. I can go to the river and get what I need. I’ve developed a trusted network of people who know about these sorts of things, and if I ask them to share their expertise they do so cheerfully. The currency exchanged in this case is not money but a willingness on my part to contribute back to those who ask within my areas of expertise or experience.

This is going to be my new motto. The flow of information can be daunting if you try to swim or walk against it. I need to let it flow around me, select one or two items I want to pursue and just kind of dip in and sample as I need to for everything else.

Is Instructional Design Theory Knowledge Necessary?

There is an interesting discussion going in the blogosphere regarding whether a instructional designer needs to be able to wax eloquent over the various instructional design theories, to perform as an instructional designer.

Start with this post, Theory vs. Application in Instructional Design: One Academic's View by Cammy Bean. Her take is that it may be necessary, but not necessarily by paying to earn a graduate degree in Instructional Technology. She references online discussions she has been having with Dr. John Curry, who teaches Instructional Technology at Oklahoma State University. Dr. Curry posted his thoughts, which were very similar to Cammy's in his blog post: Instructional Design in Academia — Where Theory and Practice RARELY Meet.

He cites a paper developed by Dr. David Merrill —  First Principles of Instruction — that seems to brush aside the idea that we need to understand in detail all of the theories such as the Dick and Carey Model or the ADDIE Model (hat tip to Stephen Downes for providing the links so I didn't have to look them up). Instead Dr. Merrill proposes that after reviewing the various ID theories and models it all boils down to knowing five basic principles.

To be included in this list the principle had to be included in most of the instructional design theories that the author reviewed. The principle had to promote more effective, efficient or engaging learning. The principle had to be supported by research. The principle had to be general so that it applies to any delivery system or any instructional architecture (Clark 2003). Instructional architecture refers to the instructional approach including direct methods, tutorial methods, experiential methods and exploratory methods. The principles had to be design oriented, that is they are principles about instruction that have direct relevance for how the instruction is designed to promote learning activities rather than activities that learners may use on their own while learning.

From this effort five principles are identified. These are summarized as follows:

• Learning is promoted when learners observe a demonstration, the demonstration principle.
• Learning is promoted when learners apply the new knowledge, the application principle.
• Learning is promoted when learners engage in a task-centered instructional strategy, the task-centered principle.
• Learning is promoted when learners activate prior knowledge or experience, the activation principle.
• Learning is promoted when learners integrate their new knowledge into their everyday world, the integration principle.

But returning to Bean's and Johnson's posts, if you read the comments the consensus seems to be we need to be at least cogent of the theories in order to sell ourselves and our capabilities to our clients. This is necessary, if for no other reason, then to put them at ease that we know what we are doing. As one commenter on Cammy's blog put it: "People respond to jargon. And, interestingly, people love learning other people's jargon...Citing academic theory makes it sound like you are putting more effort into it than 'I dunno - this just made sense. Whadya think?"

The discussion made me realize that I may have forgotten a lot of the terminology because I have not used it as often as I should. So I guess I'm going to place this on my list of items to do: Read up on all the basic theories to get them back in the front of my brain.

UPDATE: Cammy Beans in the comments section of this post asked what I consider the "basic theories" of instructional design. I'm not sure I can respond to that one. I guess the best I can propose is the ADDIE model without the "E", and if its elearning I am developing then the "I" isn't relevant either.

I prefer to think along the lines of how people best learn. David Pollard best summed that up in his post A Theory of Knowledge, and How it Could Save the World. People seem to learn best when:

1. They can directly use the skills you are trying to offer them followed by,
2. Directly observing the skill being performed by others, and finally
3. Hearing the skill being described by others.

I try to use these guideposts as my touchstone in designing instruction. My preferred goal is the first level of learning described by Pollard. Unfortunately (or perhaps fortunately in the case of some compliance training) direct use of skills is not always possible so I shoot for level 2 and try to at least demonstrate the skills and provide the learner with an opportunity to analyze and evaluate situations where these skills could be applied.

To that end, in answer to her question what is on your essential reading list?, my top recommendation is A Taxonomy for Learning, Teaching, and Assessing: A Revision of Bloom's Taxonomy of Educational Objectives, edited by Lorin Anderson and David Krathwohl. This book is a great source of assistance and inspiration when it comes to developing assessments, especially when I'm limited to multiple choice type questions.

Ah hah! Moment for a Monday Morning

I have to confess I'm feeling a bit guilty because I'm at work and I'm reviewing my learning blogs, but for this 50-year-old instructional designer, I could not resist posting this ah hah! moment I just had.

I was reading Jay Cross's article in Chief Learning Officer magazine about Adaptation. The gist of the article is that we are at a point in time where the workforce is split between those who came of age during a period that still was dominated by the Industrial Revolution and its vertical hierarchy and younger workers who are identifying with the information age and are more accustomed to its more horizontal hierarchy.

But my personal light bulb went off when I got to near the end of Jay's piece in which he wrote:

This is not to say that networks will replace all hierarchies, for that leads to chaos. Someone has to sign the paychecks and mediate among the stakeholders. The challenge is to achieve the right balance, applying command-and-control as appropriate for stability and networks when they improve performance.

Traditional learning is bursting at the seams because there is always more to learn and unlearn. The amount of knowledge in the world doubles every three years. New discoveries invalidate former truths.

So shoot me for being dense, but it never occurred to me to think of learning as something other than linear. You pass through your toddler years learning from your parents, siblings, and other toddlers; you enter elementary school, proceed through middle school, high school, college, etc.

I always saw this as just adding layers of knowledge, I never considered that New discoveries invalidate former truths, meaning you had to cycle back to information you formerly acquired and overwrite it with new information, or perhaps retain the old information, but store it elsewhere as invalid or obsolete knowledge that can be used as a red flag to correct others who still labor under the misleading or obsolete information.

Okay, back to work.

Let me tell you about...Excuse me, what were you saying?

Killian & Company have a fascinating opinion piece about the public's attention span and what it means to marketers which I think can also hold true for training and development individual. The article, The Post-Literate Era: Planning Around Short Attention Spans, when viewed in the perspective of learning initiatives would seem to argue against the lengthy (read 60 minutes or more) elearning initiative.

Brand holders need to be aware of the implications of this phenomenon, including such practical applications as starting a White Paper with a paragraph that consists of one short simple declarative sentence. Welcome to the Post-Literate Era – a period which began decades ago but which has gained momentum in the 21st century. The evidence is everywhere: we can even draw the graph of sustained attention, from a 19th-century reader willing to read David Copperfield over several weeks, to long-copy magazine ads of our grandparents' generation, to today's web pages that are given 4.5 seconds to show themselves relevant.

As an avid reader my initial response is to rail against this apparent turn of events, but, being a reader, I continued on from the initial proposition and found some guidance, guidance that had been fermenting in my brain already.

In today's age learning content can no longer be just facts on a page. They must be engaging which requires strong storytelling. Now this is nothing new and I've heard it said before the advent of shorter attention spans that successful learning events need to engage the learner, but I think this concept has often been given lip service while the focus of most learning is on how to save dollars by using software that will allow rapid development of e-learning courseware by the subject matter experts who know their materials. Unfortunately the subject matter expert may not be the best story teller.

Nobility, elected officials, and celebrities know that while they may be good at what they do, they may not be the best at telling their own stories. So they hire writers to tell their stories for them. Likewise the training industry sprang up to tell the stories of subject matter experts. I think as an industry we need to reflect on how we tell these stories and remodel them to reflect how society wants to absorb these stories.

Hour-long clicking of Next buttons to read course content and maybe see an animation or two will no longer work. We have to streamline presentations to be absorbed in smaller chunks and can be developed and delivered in multiple means: on-line courseware chunked into small (10 screens and no more) sections that can stand on their own; audio podcasts using narration developed for the courseware; transcripts of the podcasts for reading; online forums in which people can discuss the matter with one another.

It's a new age and we need to start thinking in terms of how our customers want to consume our product rather than force customers to try and swallow what we produce.

Fiber Optic Cable Cuts Isolate Millions From Internet, Future Cuts Likely | Threat Level from Wired.com

So there was a major Internet outage yesterday. We often worry about  electrical outage, but as we rapidly take to using our wireless devices as web access vehicles you have to wonder if we need to start worrying about network outages when we think about expanded use of e-learning and m-learning.

Given the desire by telecoms and broadband customers to keep costs low, situations like the current cuts will continue to happen, according to Todd Underwood, a Vice President at Renesys, which provides internet information analysis to the majority of the world's largest telecoms.

"Part of the lesson here is that there will always be outages," Underwood said. "This is all about money -- how much money do we want to pay to make sure the network doesn't go down? We are used to thinking of the internet as being a thing that goes down."

We take a great deal of our technology for granted until we lose it. Maybe we need to start thinking about redundancies in the training world as well.

Fiber Optic Cable Cuts Isolate Millions From Internet, Future Cuts Likely | Threat Level from Wired.com

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Further thoughts: Is this occurring at the same time that the economy is tightening up and corporations will be looking towards cyber alternatives to traditional classroom training? Could we be seeing a perfect storm for the training world brewing?