On Friday I had the pleasure of gathering with some very interesting people (including the Schuylers, Betsy Burroughs, and Jeff Saperstein) at Doug Englebart‘s house to discuss Consciousness. Yassi Mogahaddam started us off asking what consciousness is. It‘s clear that any time we‘re awake we‘re technically conscious, but there are appear to be two different types of consciousness.

To illustrate, we used the situation of driving. There are times when the driving is automatic, and our minds can wander to solve problems or listen to the radio. Then there‘s the case where someone swerves in front of us and we can no longer rely on our automatized processes and we‘re in the moment. We might even get angry. All this is ‘in the moment‘ still, or what Don Norman terms ‘active cognition.

Then there are the times when we think about what we‘re doing, observing ourselves being angry perhaps, and as someone pointed out, integrating our different modes of perception. Don called this ‘reflective cognition‘, but there‘s more. Eastern wisdom tells us about being centered, and clearly there are times when we‘re consciously reflecting on our own learning and thinking (meta-cognition and meta-learning).

Of course, consciousness means many things, and more than one attendee mentioned efforts to achieve higher consciousness. I naturally had to bring up wisdom, and we talked about how we might achieve it.

We reviewed historical notions of consciousness and the development of our intelligence and attitudes (the ability of the ancient Greeks to spend time philosophizing comes in some part from their use of slaves, despite their analyses of the importance of freedom), and of points of view.

The point I want to make is that self-improvement is not necessarily a natural state, and it takes cultivation to turn people to a path of seeking more than what‘s just best for themselves. Robert Sternberg has argued that we should explicitly teach wisdom in classes, and I think it should be made intrinsic to our curriculum. And this holds true at the organizational level as well!

Donald Clark, ex-CEO of the Epic Group in the UK, has got a great blog, where he cheerfully skewers misconceptions about learning. In a rant I was pointed to, he takes aim at Gagne’s Nine Dull Commandments. As the subsequent comments point out, the problem isn’t necessarily with Gagne’s elements as it is with their interpretation and a belief in their rigid order.

It’s not a case of “if you follow it (without insight), they will learn”. The typical interpretation of many of the elements is so rote that they counter what they’re supposed to do. I’ve tried to suggest an improved approach in my white paper about the Seven Step Program to eLearning Improvement (NB: PDF), and it’s nice to see others picking up that a mechanistic implementation of Gagne’ (or anyone else) won’t hit the mark.

As I previously mentioned, I got the privilege of co-hosting a day of meetings for the UK’s visiting mission on eLearning. Sponsored by the Department of Trade & Industry, these missions send a small panel of experts from industry and academia to review and report on relevant international activity. They each have specific areas of responsibility, and are to bring back the outcomes that they determine. I have to say that the group seemed very experienced and aware, and I was eagerly awaiting the report.

The report (PDF) is now available to all. This report includes chapters on mLearning, games, performance support, and more. I haven’t yet read the whole thing, but what I have read looks suitably insightful. I recommend having a look at this critical evaluation of eLearning in the US.

Jay Cross’ Informal Learning Blog, InformL pointed me to this blog post about the need for manuals and the problems with them. The diagram says it all, really.

My PhD work included mental models, and the research is robust: that with models, learners can forget some steps and regenerate the missing bits; that models provide the ability to predict what will happen or explain what happened; and troubleshoot. But what we get in instructions are rote procedures to do something, not oriented around our goals.

When I tried to learn Macromedia’s FreeHand, their tutorial had you build a picture. It was useless. It was only by experimentation that I discovered that what I thought were the atomic elements, shapes, were actually paths that could be manipulated, e.g. cut (see the Quinnovation logo). They didn’t provide a conceptual model that talked about paths and how everything, text, shapes, etc, could be translated to them (and had to be for real manipulation). I may still have it wrong, as it’s also known that individuals will infer models, possibly incorrectly, and without guidance can retain those models with great persistence.

I’ve been trying to get most elearning to focus on the underlying models instead of rote procedures (it’s one of my seven steps to better elearning points; warning, PDF).

I also note that the claim about systems being designed to not need manuals doesn’t make sense for anything more complicated than a toaster. Unless, of course, you’re going to give me unlimited bandwidth and resources, but most people want to keep the size of their devices under control and provide the full set of features people want.

I argue that it’s not about training, it’s about supporting performance, and that includes responsibility for a broader picture. Currently too much of this is siloed off in different parts of organizations, so software engineers write help systems, a different group writes manuals, the training group prepaes training, etc., all from the same information (hence the push for ‘single-sourcing’ and content models). We can do a better job if we start from the models, and populate all these forms of information in an integrated, cross-referencing, and encompassing strategy.

If, as the experts have it, customer experience is the new differentiator, having a usable system coupled with coherent support ought to be part of the picture.

Bobbi Kamil, the “blushing bride” of my colleague John Ittelson (and demonstrably successful as the founder of Cable in the Classroom), is a strong believer in constructivism, and so (at least philosophically) am I. So, in teaching a summer course in Learning Theory courtesy of Professor Ittelson, I designed a rich sequence of assignments to accompany each developing chapter.

Owing to cognitive theory and wanting them to elaborate the concepts for themselves, practice elaborating them conceptually, and apply the principles, I had them write a journal, answer a discussion question, and work in groups to address a question (typically framed as an RFP), respectively. I felt strongly that this was an appropriate set of activities.

For reasons that I won’t go into here, I was prevented from doing more than provide feedback on the group assignments during the semester. Naturally, I was somewhat leery of what the outcomes were going to be (to put it mildly).

I can’t really comment on the personal journals (yet), but the group assignments led to some very insightful outcomes. Moreover, and here’s the big lesson: the responses to the discussion questions (in a bulletin board, with a requirement for commenting on someone else’s response), were quite simply awesome. The developing understanding was with few exceptions as good or better than I could have provided.
Then came Kisrshner, Sweller, & Clark’s robust (NB: a PDF) denunciation of Constructivism. The point they make (and it’s not original, but nicely documented) is that you can’t trust learners to self-direct, and you need to provide guidance. In some what’s it’s reminiscent of the furor Reder, Anderson, & Simon caused in their reaction to situated cognition and constructivism. And, I note, that KSC do admit that the older the student, the more you should expect self-determination.

I qualify that by saying that we can’t *expect* self-learning capability, we should develop it. On the other hand, this was a Master’s program. I’m mindful that Bobbi’s advice was to ‘have faith’. And while I had hoped to provide more personal feedback, the outcomes indeed showed that the learners could come to grips (by and large) with the challenges and ambiguities, and successfully grasp the concepts.

So, do ensure you match the guidance to the learner, but do have faith and take a chance on empowering learners to take ownership of their learning and wrestle with (an appropriate level of) ambiguity. They may not enjoy it, but the learning outcomes are the proof.

There’s some interesting lists going around about what you should learn. Stephen Downes has created a list (in reply to Guy Kawasaki’s list), and not surprisingly it’s really good. I was interested in how it compared to the list I created for my ‘learning wisdom‘ talk back in November. Stephen’s is more personal (ie what a learner should take ownership of), where mine was more curricular, but there are enough similarities to see why I resonated with it.

Here then, are his 10 items and their relation to the list I created:

1. How to predict consequences – this is my ‘systems thinking’, the ability to use models to make predictions and explanations. I add in the ability to build models (even if just qualitatively), as I think it’s an important skill going forward.
2. How to read – I didn’t have this explicitly, but he means it as more than literacy, and I lump it under ‘critical thinking’.
3. How to distinguish between truth and fiction – this, too, fits under ‘critical thinking’ in my list.
4. How to empathize – this would fit under my category of ‘stewardship’, a feeling of responsibility for others, but also the other denizens of our planet and the planet itself.
5. How to be creative – I have this under ‘design’.
6. How to communicate clearly – and I have this under communication.
7. How to learn – I have ‘meta-learning’.
8. How to stay healthy – this is one place where we begin to differ, I didn’t have this explicitly, and it’s a good element.
9. How to value yourself – I think this is a good one as well. I don’t have it.
10. How to live meaningfully – Again, one I didn’t have explicitly, I’d argue (not strongly, however) that it could fall out my element of ethics.

So, my list had 5 major categories with two elements each: I had problem-solving including research and design, systems-thinking with model-based reasoning and modeling, working with others covering leadership as well as communication, learning as an umbrella for critical thinking and meta-learning, and values covering both ethics and stewardship.

I could quibble about leadership, research, and ethics, and Stephen could quibble about health, valuing yourself, and living meaningfully, but I think both lists provide some good ideas sorely missing from our current schooling. Like David Jonassen says, the problems our kids learn to solve in schools have essentially no relation to what they have to solve in life.

A few thoughts on the first day of school…

My daughter, 6, told me on Saturday that she didn’t want to start school. Having to get up and get dressed on time, and back to homework, etc. Yesterday, she told me she was excited about starting school again. The difference? She found out that she has the same teacher her brother had two years ago, a young, enthusiastic, nice teacher. Here’s to all those who teach with passion and skill!

I was talking with my students, and one opined that there were a lot of “junk teachers”. I don’t really believe that; while there probably are a few who are just looking for a sinecure (I’ve known some :), I think that there are a number of other explanations why all our teachers aren’t passionate and skilled. It’s not a highly valued profession, despite the fact that I can think of few others who have a greater influence on our future. The government puts them under ridiculous pressure to have students pass tests, despite the evidence that that doesn’t lead to useful skills. There aren’t enough of them with skills (I’ve met so many ex-teachers), their administrative support is idiosyncratic at best, they’re under-resourced, the list goes on.

And there’s a societal component as well. Sayings like “those who can, do, those who can’t, teach”, and our unfortunate tendency to belittle smarts (and lionize those who succeed financially, despite potentially suspect methods), both are at odds with teachers being successful. I’d like to suggest that any society that values lawyers more than teachers has it’s priorities wrong. Not that I have anything against lawyers (despite jokes to the contrary), but I think the eastern veneration of scholars and teachers has much to be commended. The reason I’m in learning is I think it’s the most likely way to address societal ills.

I remember a post-doc who’s wife was doing a sociology PhD. It turns out that doctors re-engineered their status in society around the 1920s, creating their medical school process (still used, with many negatives in terms of learning outcomes) and changing their public perception from ‘sawbones’ and ‘quacks’ to their almost un-questioned authority through most of the subsequent years. Her thesis was that teachers should do something similar. I’m all for it, frankly, or any other way we can get societal support back behind effective teaching and learning, not as advanced baby-sitting and rote learning. Ideas?

I received an email from someone I don’t know this morning who said “I am a fellow blogger in the training and e-learning industry. I thought you would be interested in sharing with your readers…” and proceeded to tell me about a new intiative. The concept wasn’t bad, albeit old, but she somehow forgot to mention that she was married to the co-founder of the thing. In essence it’s a listserv that they have the cheek to want to charge for membership. Heck, you can do the same thing for free in Yahoo groups or any number of places! For example, ITFORUM has been happily running very good listserve on instructional technology for years, and it’s free.

I can’t imagine how this person thought this was a viable approach, essentially insulting the intelligence of the intended audience. The point of the Cluetrain Manifesto was that with the internet, information could be shared more quickly, and credibility would be everything because you’d be found out too quickly otherwise. Well, this person, and this initiative, violate that constraint.

I get grumpy at anyone who sends me those junk letters about so-and-so’s dying wish and hasn’t bothered to check it out with Snopes (the urban legend site) first. Guess this person figured I wouldn’t bother connecting the dots. However, when you’ve been on the internet as long as I have (I did my first elearning project in 1979, back when it was ARPANET), you get skeptical.   My advice, be skeptical, check things out, and beware hype. And if you’re looking for publicity, add value, don’t blow smoke.   Caveat emptor!