Month: October 2014

Original post.

• What have you learned about integrated course design, taxonomies of learning, active learning, or problem-based learning?
• How is the online learning environment working for you? What are the advantages and/or the challenges of taking this class in this format?
• What have you learned about yourself during this unit? Have you discovered anything new about your own learning styles or preferences? Have you developed any new strategies that help you learn more effectively?

I summarize integrated course design with three insights I have picked up through the course and with Fink’s five elements.

First, creating community — this is a lifelong benchmark or touchstone for me, and my thinking about any enterprise.  In 1987, I attended the Alaska statewide conference on creating community in Sitka.  It was a formative experience for me.    Similarly, Robert Putnam’s book Bowling Alone reminded me of these values.  Creating, even briefly for a place-time, a community of learning is something that I can support, even get invigorated by.

Second flipping the classroom so that content is learned outside the contact time and contact time is used for specific application, is a new notion for me.  Though, as I have mentioned another framing of the concept: extending or continuing the conversation beyond the moment of the classroom is a practice I have celebrated for years.

Third, helping learners solve real problems or problems formulated in a real world format. Learners do what it is they are learning to do.  This is a closely held value in both my criticism of my schooling and as I have tried to help, my employees learn to do their jobs.  I think the first, most articulate, formulation of it came from reading Eliot Wiggington’s, Sometimes a Shining Moment.

Finks’ five:

1. What are the important situational factors in a particular course and learning situation?
2. What should our full set of learning goals be?
3. What kinds of feedback and assessment should we provide?
4. What kinds of teaching and learning activities will suffice, in terms of achieving the full set of learning goals we set?
5. Are all the components connected and integrated, that is, are they consistent and supportive of each other?

I am comfortable in an online learning environment.  In particular, this course with its collaborative approach to blogging and commenting is effective for me.  It makes sense to take a course about teaching and learning online… well, online.  Indeed, it would be a little odd to take it in a solely face-to-face environment.  Where we are having frequent synchronous sessions, it would be easy to see this in a blended environment too.

I have a theoretical understanding of integrated course design.  However, because I am not a teacher I lack the details of practical experience with integrated course design.  I lack the repetition of daily practice.  I also understand a little bit more about how I include my direct reports in making the content of our training, indeed every aspect of our workplace, for our student employees.  I feel hampered not having their contribution and insights into the work.   That insight has raised the question for me, about how teachers can create courses on their own.  I know that in my situation professors frequently design courses on their own.  Sometimes core courses are informed by conversations and are practically designed by individuals.  This is a significant difference from how work is done in many other work places.  I wonder how much better courses would be if along with the content expert were a team of an instructional designer and an assessment specialist.

My own learning is less of a matter for reflection at this point in the course.  Rather, I am focused on my target demographic for the “course” we are designing as our final project.  Getting out of my own head and into theirs is the challenge.  That empathic exercise however is important.  I have been reading in popular writings about the generational differences between “Boomers” and “Millennials.”   I am trying to avoid over generalizations like: “Kids these days….”  Rather, there are very specific differences in expectations and experience and I cannot gloss those details if I hope to facilitate learning in that demographic.

Fink, L. D. (2013). Creating Significant Learning Experiences: An Integrated Approach to Designing College Courses. San Fancisco, CA: Jossey-Bass.

Putnam RD. (2000). Bowling Alone: The Collapse and Revival of American Community.  New York: Simon & Schuster.

Wigginton, B.E. (1985). Sometimes a shining moment: The Foxfire experience.  New York: Anchor Books.

Original post.

In your writing post this week, discuss the value of taxonomies for defining student learning, with specific examples from your subject area. Attach your learning objectives and concept map. (Don’t forget to provide the title or topic of your lesson plan.) It is particularly important that you review classmates’ posts this week and provide feedback on their learning objectives. Identifying outcomes and writing clear objectives is a challenging task; I’m confident you will all benefit by giving and receiving critique on this assignment!

This is the first time in a long time where I have floundered with an assignment.   The concept map tools were just perplexing for me.  I went to each website and tried each interface.  I placed shapes and drew links between them in order to see how the tools worked.  Then I stared blankly at the interface.  I simply could not see how or why to use them to accomplish work – this work.   Therefore, I have no conceptual maps to submit.  Obviously, I feel some defensiveness – what is wrong with me?  I talked with my wife about how she might use them.  The process she described was helpful in developing an understanding of the tool.  Alas, it was an alien process for me.  I might doodle some circles and lines on a notepad, or create category headings.  Conceptual models for me grow out of sentences, and paragraphs and finally essays.  I may edit those down to bullet points for professional writing, for final presentation.  I might use the mind maps afterword to create a diagram or a flowchart to illustrate a workflow analysis — but probably not.  I am just never likely to use these tools.  Perhaps it is good for me to know about them in order to share them with learners or co-workers….

Turning to the objective builder, I resonated with the Radio James Objective builder tool.  I see two related uses: one in writing job descriptions and tasks in a workflow, second, in creating employee training.  I love the simplicity and interactivity of the tool and once you have outcomes drafted you simply highlight, cut, and paste them to a working document.  Interestingly, I find that for most tasks in our workplace I do not need the highest-level functions from entry-level employees.  I do not need them to create, or evaluate, and only occasionally to analyze.  Rather, I need high functioning with application, understanding and remembering.  My supervisors will operate more frequently with analysis, and evaluation yet only occasionally at the creation level.

A related difference is that rarely in our workplace do we engage in creative work alone.  It is usually in a group.  In addition, this was another hang up with this week’s assignment.  “Write three learning outcomes” — this is work done in a team in our workplace.   I also struggled with the scope of this assignment.  I selected:

• Emergency Procedures
• Photocopier/Printers
• Professional Demeanor

Trying to write this in entirety in six hours was just not possible, and I missed my team and their energy and insight.  Two of these are easier to write outcomes for; emergency procedures and troubleshooting and maintaining printers/photocopiers, as both have “correct” answers.  I can be quite behavioristic in my formulation of these outcomes.  For example, evacuating the building has one right outcome and one right process.  Similarly getting paper jams out of a copier, filling paper trays, and exchanging toner cartridges all have specific steps and a single final decision either the machine is working again, or it is not and an out of order sign is affixed to it and the matter reported to a supervisor.

However, in including “professional demeanor” I vastly exceeded what could be done in the allotted time.  Yet, this is perhaps the most interesting of the outcomes I identified.  It is inherently subjective, inherently situational.  Offering feedback to employees on this skill is an art, and an iterative process as they self-correct to approximate an improvement on subjective outcome.   I selected eight elements to address; appearance, reliability, competence, ethics, phone etiquette, written communication, self/workspace organization, and accountability.  These were selected after Googling the topic and reviewing a number of blogs and online articles – a very different, but very realistic way that a lot of work in the workplace gets started.  The point in academic writing is to create original or uncommon knowledge, however, the point in writing for the workplace is to find a norm and build around that.  Likewise, there is no point in attributing common knowledge and I am certain that various documents and web pages that we have created have likewise been appropriated – and I cannot care.

Turning to Appearance, my first stab at writing outcomes sounds like this:

• Exemplify professionalism through dressing appropriately for this workplace,
• Understand that smiling when you greet customers and co-workers can convey confidence, enthusiasm and may begin to diffuse difficult conversations.
• Apply this understanding in using appropriate facial expression in the matching communication situation – do not smile or laugh while a customer is obviously angry or upset, for example.

Appropriate dress in a college work place tends to be more casual, though at times ties, coats and pantsuits are called for.  However, we understand that students are not going to return to their rooms and change for work.  Therefore, for young men we ask for colored shirts, young women we ask them to avoid or to cover tank tops, for examples.  We actively discourage showing up in gym clothes or pajamas.  Our point is not to die on this hill but rather to start to sensitize the young people to the issue.  I asked one of my student supervisors to come in early this morning because the new President was hosting an event in the library – on his own he offered that he would dress up a bit.  That is a successful outcome.  To my mind, it shows competence at the comprehension level of Bloom’s taxonomy.  I do not need the Supervisor to evaluate or judge the merit of dressing appropriately – I need them to judge the situation and dress appropriately for it.

Perhaps then, the employee is actually operating significantly higher level then I imagined….

Turning to the next performance indicator:

Reliability

Exemplify professionalism by –

• Showing up for your shift a few minutes early, working through your checklist of chores immediately, and communicating about sharing the chores with your co-worker.
• If you need to miss a shift for legitimate reasons arrange for shift coverage as soon as you learn of your need.
• If you are ill contact either or both your student supervisor or Branch coordinator at the earliest possible time and ask for shift coverage.
• If you offer to cover a co-worker’s shift make certain that you follow through.
• Any service promise you make to a customer needs to be executedupon and completed. This may involve clearly communicating with a co-worker or supervisor since the actual work maybe done by another.

To my mind a young person who behaved in these ways would be competent in behaving with professional demeanor as regards reliability.  Extending this and returning to Bloom’s taxonomy I think they would be at the analysis level.  My reasoning being that if I asked them to tell me why these behaviors were important they would be able to explain.  The occasions we see student employees achieve synthesis is on their return from abroad or from internships where they compare their workplace experiences or experiences with service providers and demonstrate insight into why we prioritize reliability among our employees.  They may continue and evaluate these differences but in truth I am not seeking there feedback on what we have determined to be workplace appropriate.  Said differently I am not looking for them to evaluate but to abide by these norms.

So what I am struggling with here is that we may well be successfully teaching to a higher level, but we do not need to evaluate performance at that level….

This gets us back to a question asked by Owen in a comment – he wondered how I would apply cognitive and constructivist and connectionist theories of learning to workplace behavior.  I am wondering about that as well.  I suspect the value of such a theoretical enterprise is in being self-reflective about our process.  I am struggling a little bit with these taxonomies and theories.  It is interesting to realize that my employees may be actually learning at high levels, synthesizing, evaluating and judging but I do not see it because I am not looking for it.  I need them to operate at the mid-level for most functions and that is sufficient.  However, I wonder if higher order outcomes are occurring; so then what more can be accomplished were we to pay attention to that?  Alternatively, if our evaluation of excellence might be more objectively informed by these higher order levels of learning.  I wonder if it might be more repeatable if we are using better theories to interpret behavior can we in turn get better behavior more frequently.  Given the pressure, we are under to generate customer enthusiasm I suspect I have some hard work to do in more precisely recognizing and capitalizing on student employee’s work in analysis, synthesis and evaluation.  This bends back around to generating rubrics as well.  Creating rubrics will probably break me as well.   I have to say this is humbling.  It is also starkly revealing in how different the work of teachers and employers is.

Above I say: “For example, evacuating the building has one right outcome and one right process.”  And I ask now do I really mean it?  Nothing is more subjective than emergency response; nothing is more dependent upon correct judgment.  For example, evacuating during a drill is a rote routine.  However, imagine clearing a building with a real fire burning.  All of a sudden, my behavior may change radically.  I may carry a fire extinguisher with me.  I may access floors through cut-through or stairwells previously not used.  My goal is to empty the building completely and systematically and to get myself out safely.  If I limit my employees to rote protocol, I might kill them or a customer.  If I encourage them to operate at higher levels, I might save lives and speed the process.

Emergency Procedures

• Locate First aid kit, fire extinguisher, Light switches, panic button, and emergency call list
• Explain how to use; First aid kit, fire extinguisher, Light switches, panic button, emergency call list
• Properly execute a building evacuation for fire alarm,

This is inadequate.  I have to dig deeper.  I have to explore objectives that employ verbs, like solve, use, prepare, or infer, question, select, even more, plan, modify, and rearrange, and again, evaluate, interpret, and justify.

I do not think I can do this in the time allotted or on my own or once and for all.

Original post.

What theoretical principles support the use of game mechanics in learning? Consider the list you created of ways in which the world has changed, and then reflect on the goals of Partnership for 21st Century Skills. In your writing this week, discuss the ways in which learning must change in the 21st Century and the ways in which it must continue to build upon solid theory and models. Elaborate on ways in which Khan Academy or Peer Instruction are either accomplishing those goals or falling short.

I guess I am disappointed.  If schools themselves are part of our trouble with learning; then how is more of the same going to be an improvement?  Since leadership is a matter close to my heart, I selected that topic as an entry point into the case studies of exemplar schools on the P21 website.  I first clicked through the slides on their Tumblr.  Alas, I really did not see a difference in those images from my own recollections of K-12– more than 30 years ago.  Then I listened to the podcast and was meet by a jargon dump from professional educators.  I listened through to the point where they allowed a student to talk and again I was just disappointed – just more of the same dressed up and promoted on the internet.  I then clicked through to their “about us” section for parents and community.  There were pretty summaries of curricular high points, assertions without evidence, but most disturbing, there was nothing about community building.  Rather education was still just a commodity produced by experts that we are expected to consume.  Although the home page for P21 has a world map, all of the schools they hold up as exemplars are from the US.  The little rainbow map of the program is crisp and clear and boring.  It is fundamentally self-referential within the US education industry.
I want to run far away from this.  Instead, what if we build a new model based on what young people are really doing?

At 1:41 John Seely Brown describes his neighbor, a 20 something surfer, a world class surfer. He and his friends have refined a technique for speed learning but more for invention of new techniques. I love the point that JSB makes about a 48-hour turnaround time on new tricks – fascinating. I of course love the risk of failure as well.

To my mind, we have several tools or attributes to inventory here:

• Peer group of like-minded and skilled persons
  • Mental toughness
  • Physical toughness
• A shared curiosity for a topic embedded in the real world
• The equipment to engage in the activity
• Equipment to record the engagement and hence to study and criticize the engagement
• the internet connects a global community of peer groups hence peer review

Returning to the classroom, we see:

At 11:17 Eric Mazur says: “You don’t learn by listening you learn by doing.”  Moreover, a few seconds later he describes the heart of the flipped classroom the transfer of content occurs before and outside the classroom the sense making occurs inside the classroom and a classroom where peers help each other make sense.  At 8:35 he give the clue to why this works so well – a person with a fresh understanding also clearly understands the confusion and can help their peers to avoid the confusion.  By contrast, for the “expert” that confusion is long gone and so is their human connection with not knowledge but rather ignorance.

These two examples seem most closely aligned with the Constructivist theories of learning.

Constructivists see learners as active rather than passive. Knowledge is not received from the outside or from someone else; rather, the individual learner interprets and processes what is received through the senses to create knowledge. The learner is the centre of the learning, with the instructor playing an advising and facilitating role. Learners should be allowed to construct knowledge rather than being given knowledge through instruction (Duffy & Cunningham, 1996). The construction of knowledge includes both physical and intellectual learning activities (Phillips, 2005). A major emphasis of constructivists is situated learning, which sees learning as contextual (Hung, Looi, & Koh, 2004). Learning activities that allow learners to contextualize the information should be used in online instruction. If the information has to be applied in many contexts, then learning strategies that promote multi-contextual learning should be used to make sure that learners can indeed apply the information broadly. Learning is moving away from one-way instruction to construction and discovery of knowledge (Tapscott, 1998) (Ally 2008).

We quite clearly hear Mazur speak of the change in his role in the classroom he uses the term “coach.”  However, who has that role in the example of the surfer’s peer group?  I would theorize that it is a shared role.  No single person has exclusive claim to those responsibilities in the group.  Both examples show learners constructing knowledge one physical the other intellectual.  Indeed we see Mazur’s disruptive moment being the realization that his teaching was context specific, classroom and textbooks, rather than applicable in real life.  As he flipped his classroom, he could shift his focus to multi-contextual learning.  The JSB example is clearly multi-contextual as the “trick” is learned around the globe within 48 hours – remember, every beach and break is unique.   This 48-hour turnaround is interesting to postulate as having a link to connectionism through the butterfly flap of chaos theory. I particularly like the link between constructionist theories of learning the principle of decision-making in connectionist theories.  “Decision-making is itself a learning process. Choosing what to learn and the meaning of incoming information is seen through the lens of a shifting reality. While there is a right answer now, it may be wrong tomorrow due to alterations in the information climate affecting the decision” (Siemens 2005).  This skill set of decision-making is I think more accurately taught and learned through surfing then through lecture hall physics – though both refer to matter and energy in motion.

Ally, M. (2008). Foundations of educational theory for online learning. In Anderson, T., & Elloumi, F. (Eds.). The theory and practice of online learning (2nd ed.) (pp. 15–44). Athabasca, AB, Canada: Athabasca University.

Siemens, G. (2005). Connectivism: A learning theory for the digital age. International Journal of Instructional Technology and Distance Learning 2(1).